Hunterboy
My thoughts exactly. The 'trades' on offer are mainly 'warm-body' type jobs (unskilled or at best semi-skilled). Only medics/lawyers/media/IT types are deemed to have equivalent or better skills to their regular counterparts.
Of course this is a function of the 27 day minimum training committment, but I have to wonder why it appears impossible for experienced aircraft engineers to be reservists working on military aircraft? I shouldn't wonder that these very same people may well work on military aircraft in deep maintenance that the RAF has now contracted out. Civ engineers have very good core skills and converting to a new type is an established process in the civvy world (think Bristow engineers going from EC225 to S92)
To my mind the whole setup reeks of cheap-as-possible, hence no possibility of 'short' type courses to allow civvy qualified engineers to get up to speed with service aircraft. I know the USAF don't take a similar attitude and offer a much wider variety of training, so that their reservists are far more directly comparable with the same regular trades.
If the percentage of reservist is to get up to the planned levels, then I can foresee a situation that unskilled/semi-skilled work will become the province of reservists and only the skilled trades will be regular. I suppose the RAF are hoping that what will actually happen is that they will be able to recruit into the reserves as many ex-regular Engineers etc as unskilled civvies.
Does seem to be a waste of some great talent out in civvy street who have directly applicable skills. If the RAF can deploy someone for 6-9 months (work-up etc), surely they can run trade courses of the same length to get well qualified people up to speed?
