Jerred Moon recently received a very big honor when he was selected to participate in the prestigious Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training (ENJJPT) Program at Sheppard Air Force Base, in Wichita Falls.
Moon, who hails from Flower Mound, is a senior at Texas Tech University, where he holds the rank of Cadet Colonel within the university’s ROTC program.
Moon said the selection process for ENJJPT is highly competitive, adding that applicants are chosen based on a number of factors.
“During ROTC, you develop an order of merits, which is your OOM score,” Moon said. “It’s based on your GPA, your commander’s ranking, your PCSM’s, which is your Pilot Candidate Selection Method, which just involves pilot test scores and hand-eye coordination tests.
“The other aspects are your physical fitness test and how well you did in field training. The average pilot’s order of merit would be between a 70 and 80. To be considered for ENJJPT, you would normally need to score a 92 or higher.”
Moon’s score was a 96.6.
The ENJJPT is a training program through the Air Force to which Moon said only the top one percent of applicants are accepted.
“The main focus of ENJJPT is that they are more geared toward making combat pilots, fighter pilots and bomber pilots,” Moon said. “It is a little bit longer, and you fly a little bit more than a normal UPT (undergraduate pilot training) and it is just a very selective program.
“You’ll also be flying with people from other nations. That’s where the NATO aspect of it comes into it.”
Moon said his ultimate career goal is to become a pilot in some capacity, and said he will start the ENJJPT program after he graduates this spring.
“We’re going to be doing a whole lot of flying,” Moon said. “We have 12-hour days, from five o’clock in the morning to five o’clock in the afternoon, and they’ll just run us through simulators, we have to do some physical training, and of course, there will be a lot of actual flying in different kinds of training aircraft.”
Moon is getting married the week after graduation to Emily F. Licata, a 2006 Argyle HS alumni who is also graduating from Texas Tech this May with a Bachelor’s of Business Administration. Her parents are John and Jonna Licata and his parents are Tony and Lynn Moon. The couple will wed at the Marty Leonard Chapel in Fort Worth on May 22nd.
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