Mission Systems Officer/Operator FSTA

[ALM In Waiting]

Hi,
Does anyone have any gen on what the rearcrew of the FSTA will comprise of?
I have heard a Mission Systems Officer/Operator will fly on AAR sorties, but will the aircraft also carry an ALM? Will there be any duel training on these roles or will the MSO role be Officer only?

Thanks in advance.

[MATELO]

http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/358480-fsta-mso-question.html

[Seldomfitforpurpose]

In another desperate attempt to justify themselves sadly the Nav Mafia will prevail, another very sad day for the RAF :(

[ALM In Waiting]

From what I can make of the linked thread, it appears the job is open to both WSOs and WSOps of all types.

[getsometimein]

From a manning brief last week...

After first tours, all non-NCA-MSO's will be gone.

It's a CMN/ALM post.

[lj101]

Happy to be corrected

The plan i heard was a mix of WSO and WSOP. When carrying 'pax' the role will be ALM down the back, when refuel mission, he/she will be in the cockpit flicking switches to dispense fuel.

AARC will continue to run the refuel plans for trails TFN due to the mission planning equipment not working - and not predicted to be viable for a long time......

[Seldomfitforpurpose]

From a manning brief last week...

After first tours, all non-NCA-MSO's will be gone.

It's a CMN/ALM post.

With not long to serve it really matters not a jot to me but my question has always been why one tour only or even why one tour at all :confused:

[Nomorefreetime]

I'm led to believe, there will be no ALM on routine pax flights, Civ Dispatcher who work much the lines an Airline uses

[getsometimein]

I presume since the MSO is doing the job of an Air Eng and also a Nav (and a AEOp, but nobody seems to care about that), then they wanted the input of those roles...

[brit bus driver]

Will there be any duel training

Pistols or foils?

:ok:

Taxi for driver....

[Arty Fufkin]

From a briefing a few weeks ago:

The KC30 will not carry an ALM. It will carry at least one MSO. MSOs will be NCO aircrew who will fulfil one of two roles depending on the sortie type.

1. 3rd man on the flight deck during AAR sorties, dispensing fuel and managing the AAR plot.

2. Senior cabin crew on non AAR sorties, much like a purser on a regular airline. This includes the duty of pushing a trolly and asking "chicken or bl*w job?"

The first job is essentialy an amalgamation of the current roles of Nav and Air Eng. The second job is essentially that of a steward. All MSOs will do both. Inevitably, some will struggle with the complexity of the first job, and some will feel that the second job is beneath them.



Trouble ahead methinks.

[MrBernoulli]

Trouble ahead methinks.If they do it that way, there will be trouble!

So, how does such a person divide their attention when doing a long-range AAR trail? I don't doubt that seats will be occupied by (many) support crew, for both the tanker and the receivers, so will not 'looking after' a cabin complement distract from AAR duites? Particularly when AAR problems start to manifest themselves mid-Atlantic - abort point airfields going out in unforecast snow, receivers have tanker transfer/refuelling problems, etcetera! Been there, done that! Should the MSO be distracted by "Chicken or beef?" issues, or a squaddie who has snuck on some booze and become noisy and obnoxious (been there done that, too!)?

Since the mission software doesn't do the job really required, you have all the makings of a cake and arse party .... no surprise there, then.

[iRaven]

I've heard that the cockpit MSO job is going to be a WSO(Nav/Eng/AE) and that the back end will be WSOp(LM/AE).

Pretty likely to have some Nav involvement as the 4-star CinC is a Nav. 2-star AOC is a Nav and 1-star AO AT/AAR is a Nav - Mafia is the right word, like it or lump it...

iRaven

[BEagle]

It will be interesting to see whether the RAF's Voyager, certified to civil requirements, will also be required to meet civil regulations for cabin crew when any passengers are carried. With something over 250 seats, that means a minimum of 6 cabin crew even if only 1 passenger is carried in the cabin.....

As for the 3rd flight deck member, it makes sense to have a spread of previous experience whilst this totally new concept beds down. Personally I consider the A310MRTT rationale to be better balanced than the A330MRTT rationale - but there was no choice in the matter as far as the A310 was concerned because the Air Refuelling Operator is situated off the flight deck and only the minimum level of modifications were sanctioned for the AAR role. Whereas the Voyager is a more complex redesign of the A330, with much of the mission system currently planned to be managed by the pilots, not the ARO.

Of course the functionality and ease of use of the mission system will have a strong influence on the requirements for the operator. Personally I feel that any design which requires the pilots of a 3-person flight deck to spend time pecking away at Onboard Information Terminal keypads with receivers in close formation to be.....less than ideal.

MrB, in the early days of the VC10K before elfin safety, we were all expected to take turns acting as trolley tart for the 20 or so passengers in the back AND the flight deck! Which meant cooking and serving hot meals, not just throwing S1 boxes around like a trucky ALM!

[Lima Juliet]

Also, CAS recently briefed the press that "plug and play" ISR payloads were being considered for FSTA. Now the question is, are we going to use satellite bandwidth to reachback with the collect or put some sensor ops on board? If this goes ahead I can see many MSOs needed.

The other thing is, if FSTA is to have an ISR role, will it join the rest of the ISR assets when they move to 1Gp?

LJ

PS - here's what Flight said RAF boss plots possible ISR role for A330 tankers (http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/04/15/355589/raf-boss-plots-possible-isr-role-for-a330-tankers.html)

[mmitch]

How does the USAF crew their KC10As ?
mmitch.

[BEagle]

"We need to do much more in the way we drive towards innovation," Dalton told the Royal Aeronautical Society's Aerospace 2011 conference in London on 13 April. "There are few good reasons why every airframe in an operational area should not be an ISR collector, or that FSTA could not be configured as a strategic ISR platform. Off-the-shelf modular capabilities to make this happen exist and can, indeed should, be integrated into future and current platforms, affordability permitting."

The AirTanker consortium, which will deliver the FSTA service under a private finance initiative deal with the UK Ministry of Defence, has also previously hinted at wider potential uses for the 14-aircraft fleet, the last of which will enter use by mid-2016.

"There's a lot more we could do," director of flight operations James Scott told Flightglobal late last year.

Dalton needs to remember that the Voyager is not his! "Affordability permitting" indeed - do the words 'contract variance' mean anything to him? Mr Scott is indeed correct; a lot more could indeed be done with the Voyager platform. But that would undoubtedly come with significant cost!

MoD signed up to PFI for a specific contractual service. If Dalton wants to use the Voyager for an additional role, it will require a lot more than bolting on some new store....... Does he know the cost of even the simplest Airbus Service Bulletin, let alone a major modification?

It would probably be cheaper to keep Sentinel in service!

[Arty Fufkin]

As I said, it will carry at least one MSO. That means on a trail or at other times when pax are carried on an AAR sortie, one MSO will be doing the flight deck job, another will be doing the hostie job. All very simple really.
All MSOs will do both jobs, there is no intention to break the trade down into AAR and AT. The best solution to my mind is to only have MSOs on AAR sorties, and have the senior cabin crew job handled all the time by capable (assuming you can find any) senior stewards.
Sadly, the ALM empire refuse to accept that any AT aircraft can operate at all without some sort of WSOP on board, even if they will have nothing to do with the loading/ trim/ DAC etc outside of those responsibilities carried out every day by airline cabin crew.
As for Beagle's question about safety standards, I am lead to believe that the RAF' s training and procedures will copy exactly those of Airtanker, who will be an AOC holder and audited by the CAA.

[Biggus]

First of all I'm a Nav, so no doubt could be accused of rising to the bait. However, I'm on my last tour in the RAF, nowhere near Brize, and have no interest in an MSO job......


Let's start off by saying that the Nav/WSO trade is DEAD! Recruitment and training have stopped, the aircraft retired, there will be no replacement personnel in future etc. Therefore, manning a new aircraft with a 25 year life ahead of it with Navs/WSOs when you don't have to is a mad idea (actually, the fact that it is a mad idea might well mean the RAF will do it, not because of any "Nav" mafia input.... ;)).


However, although the RAF is about to make large numbers of people, including Navs/WSOs, redundant as part of the SDSR, when the MSO role was originally being scoped we lived in an RAF that didn't do that. With the retirement of various other ME aircraft types, such as C-130K/VC-10, etc, the RAF was going to have on its hands a small pool of "spare" ME Navs/WSOs/AEngs that it needed to employ until their next exit point (either at 55, or until their not being retained at the mid career point). These guys had relevant skillsets for the MSO role. These guys would be in the RAF, being paid, whatever they were used for. Which is more cost effective then, use them until their retirement as part of the initial MSO pool, where their skills/experience could hopefully be passed on to a younger generation as the role started up. Alternatively you have to recruit youngers off the highstreet (as I believe we don't have a surplus of ALM/WSOps) at extra cost, with no prior experience in the role, and find your small pool of Navs/WSOs/AEngs "non jobs" until they retire? Seems like a no brainer to me?

As for mafias, there might well be a "nav" one - I wouldn't know. However, the RAF has had in its time Harrier, Buccaneer (at least OCU, ask BEagle), SAR (at least SARTU), Maritime, mafias. I expect there are many others my sheltered existance has not exposed me to...

If there is a nav mafia, I would suggest that it's days are numbered, and it's effect declining, but no doubt it will be replaced by an ALM mafia (if there isn't already one...)! ;)









By the way - the idea of maintaining a "seedcorn" of maritime experience which includes ex-maritime WSOs is also a mad idea. How can you use that seedcorn to grow anything when you have no possibility of maritime WSOs in the future..... :ugh::ugh::ugh:

Any future RAF maritime fleet (if there ever is one) will be a "WSO free environment"........!!!!!!

[iRaven]

Biggus

Half correct old bean:

1. "yes" we're not training any navs at present.

2. But under MFTS we were planning on doing Nav training on some very nice and shiney King Air 350CERs that are being fitted out by Cobham. They mods include observer/nav workstations down the back and very nice multi-mode radar underneath.

Also, I couldn't agree with you more that the future of WSO Navs is DEAD (as long as you mean Denial of Enemy Air Defences) - some EA-18Gs when F35C is cancelled would do very nicely! :ok:

iRaven

[Biggus]

iR,

I don't want to start an arguement, but I believe you are wrong. A couple of points:

1) The RN still has a requirement for Observers, and is continuing to recruit and train. In terms of training, the Jetstreams previously used by the RN in this role are being/have been (I'm not RN, so not fully in the loop) retired, and will be replaced by King Airs I believe. This may well be the MFTS contract you refer to - you specifically mentioned Observer workstations.

2) The RAF used to have a requirement for WSOs for several years to come. The MRA4 (2 WSOs per crew) was about to enter service with an expected life of at least 25 years. GR4s were also expected to run on to 2025. Training of a new generation of RAF WSOs was due to take place as part of MFTS, but not for a few years yet, and I wasn't aware that any contracts had yet been signed for this within MFTS (which is a multi stage incremental process). With the demise of the MRA4, and GR4 retirement by about 2018, the RAF no longer has any long term need for WSOs. Recruitment has stopped, the branch is no longer mentioned in any recruitment literature, the Dominie has been retired, and I don't see the RAF resurrecting it in years to come.

The precident has already been set. There is no AEng school any more, but we still have AEngs flying on E-3Ds for many years to come. If the RAF does need any rearcrew commissioned "operators" in years to come no doubt they will cobble together some training package for the handful required - perhaps they will start by doing RN Observer training......?!