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