Back to the thread.
There are some good things to come out of this review but it would depend on how they are handled. The proposed change to training is one of them.
I am very much in favour of re-training. It keeps the individual fresh and on their toes.
One problem though. How do you persuade a 18/19 year old to join as NCA when all he/she wants to be is say, a Chinook crewman? Do you say ‘well you are NCA first and a crewman second’ (as you would with a commissioned pilot ‘officer first – pilot second’). Or do you say ‘well you will more than likely have to do five years in a job of our choosing (depending on where we are short of people). At the end of that you might have a chance of being retrained to the specialisation that you are interested in’. How will the recruiters manage that, bearing in mind that some of them will be MACR themselves?
Can you imagine what the interest would be in commissioned service in the RAF if everyone who joined were told ‘well, we will make you an officer first and then we will decide later if you go Ops Support, Admin Sec or Navigator’?
Interesting and I wait to see how it is handled.