We were told about 3-4 days into our A squadron course that there was a damn good chance that most of us would be made redundant at the end of the course; it'd be a similar reselection process that the pilots faced, with a pay-off and a "Thanks anyway".
As globefan rightly says, it was the fallout that came about from the pilot chop that stopped that redundancy happening. Truth be told, when compared to what we have to look forward to now, I would much rather have taken a redundancy; I could have gone and got other qualifications elsewhere - it would have set me up nicely to train as a commercial diver for example.
I wonder what there would be more outcry over; a bunch of young guys and girls getting shown the door with a cheque in hand by the RAF (again), or the RAF paying guys a (relatively) large amount of money, who are of little use to the service and having to wait sometimes 8 years before they can start their very short operational career?
Lots of people seem to forget that most if not all of the pilots who were culled back in 2011 landed on their feet with careers in the commercial industry.