Originally Posted by
Bob Viking
When AVM Mark Green (then AOC 22 Gp) came to RAF Valley in 2010 to talk to everyone about the upcoming SDSR and redundancies he made it clear to us all that his plan was to get rid of the older guys (the QFIs) and spare the students. History will tell us that he didn’t get his way and hundreds of students were made redundant.
What did happen though was a generation of very disgruntled students were born and every QFI there realised that they were entirely expendable. Certainly my mindset changed overnight and I knew I could no trust the organisation that I had invested so much time in.
It is no accident that, shortly afterwards, I left Valley and so started a run of three overseas flying tours in different Air Forces, with a brief return to Valley in between. What I learnt, sadly, was that the only times I felt truly appreciated in my 23 years in the RAF was when I was serving in or alongside a foreign Air Force.
Maybe it’s because I’m a white male but I learned that nobody in the RAF cared if I stayed so I left to ply my trade elsewhere. And this comes from someone who always assumed I would serve until I was 60.
BV
Never easy for a Service when your Lords and Masters ask you to reduce from 38,000 down to 33,000 within 4 years (about 1 in 9 of your work force), thence onto 31,750 from 2015 but with a big buy of shiny new equipment and a flying training system designed for something smaller. A total cluster, you could call it!
On the face of it, the redundancy was done the correct way by slicing down the side of the rank triangle. Really rubbish if you have recently joined, but equally so for those mid career too, but it had to be done that way. I actually made Manning’s job easier by ‘throwing the towel in’ as I found myself something else to do - I wasn’t alone. But, of course there were some that were kept that should have gone and some told to go that the Service should have kept. But getting rid of the old to keep the young - that is a daft idea as you end up with demographic troughs and peaks that shock the workforce balance for years to come. The saddest part was that some held out for redundancy, and when they didn’t get it, they left too, thus making those troughs in the demographic (age and rank) anyway. So that certainly could have been done better by asking for volunteers and then selecting those from the right brackets.
I always laugh out loud when people seem to think that the Service will falter when they leave. The Service really doesn’t care about individuals and really it’s only your buddies and close colleagues that do. In a machine of 31,750 regulars and 3,500 reserves then the only person who can look out for you, and get you where you want to be, is yourself. I learned that fairly shortly after walking out of that dump near Sleaford into the real Air Force. It’s the same outside too, indeed probably far more Machiavellian as well!