Is it true that MOD is planning to cut RAF RANKS by a 3rd come May 2011

[5KSTROP]

It has become apparent that a memo has unfortunately been released a mere six weeks too early, informing the people in the know of such matters to recomend slashes to be made to RAF manpower, to enable the force to be reduced by a third by the year 2011, thus coinciding with a very neat bit of trimming stitching and closing of certain Stations around the uk. news of this it seems was also relaid to one to many prying ears at a recent xmas function in the mess at a rather large well known establishment in the South West of England. Mind you, you just never can tell eh...obviously not one to start a rumour but if you fellows and ladies of course were privvy to this info then prey do tell.:mad: any spelling well really its just not on is old beaners

[Impiger]

No it is not true:ok:

[Lord Trenchards Brat]

5KSTROP
I'd suggest you use your sources already mentioned and let US know where the redundancies are planned :p


Either that or practice your fishing skills!:ok:

[lurkposition]

It is absolutely true that in mid 2005 there will be a reduction in manpower by 1! There may of course be more ....

TTFN.

[5KSTROP]

Lordtrenchard and all you other crazy folks.....
I would love to have info at hand as to where these killer cuts will be made, alas as I said it was over heard, at which point i must remind you it was merely that. (overheard). I posted the info as I assumed it may trigger a blurred thought pattern of some partied out beer call, regular who would then let the rest of us mortals know...CHECK THE MEANING PPRUNE I posted a rumour as the web address suggest we just might like to.
By the way i am fresh out of wrigglies so lend uz a maggot and i may well just find an ice hole to plug and fish eh my old chum....merry christmas to one and all....never mind for all of you in the fearsome force fear not as I forsee a redundency, for at least 90% of the force would be more like a liberation. Your lives would far improve and the world would be a rosy place once again. oh news in an old dear in elgin just mailed to say she'd love to go to joanna's on a wed only its RAF Seduction night and she can't meet the criteria only being 52........only joking before you all try to castrate me......toddle pip

[Pontius Navigator]

5Kstrop

If it is NOT true now it probably will be by 2010.

The number of WSO we need will be down dramatically. The number teaching new ones down too. We are cutting the EFA by a tranche. If that tranche is not needed, why keep the aircraft it was to have replaced.

So that is another third of the F3 force. They will need less tankers and they will probably be flown by 55 year old American pilots working for a well-known record lable company.

Air Traffic Control will be largely contractorised, only 'cause they have a piss poor recruiting and retention record.

Fighter Control - no fighters and an AWAC so no need for a control.

Dark blue looks better on ships so the Harrier replacement guys will probably wear sandals and navy blue shorts.

Only a third?

[5KSTROP]

PONTIOUS
Like Ihave said in the title, thank you!
It seems strange to have a real answer for a change, with a tit bit of info to chew on to boot!
Have a merry christmas one and all i hope the harrier guys toes don't blacken what with wearing those sandals on deck..peeep peeeep pipe him aboard Cappin flint warkkk warkkk

[MrBernoulli]

lurkposition

Absolutely correct. There will be at least one more. Hurrah!

[Proletarian]

Pontius Navigator

Having spent nearly 30 years as an RAF air trafficker, I think your recent post deserves a response.

There have always been problems with recruiting and retention in air traffic, for two simple reasons, firstly an absence of any form of specialist pay (why put up with all the hassle when you can earn the same and get promoted far quicker in almost any other ground branch), secondly the lack of any form of structured crossover training to a civil ATC licence.

The absence of specialist pay is due entirely to the inability of those in high places to neither recognise the need, nor wish to set a precedent from the ‘all of one company syndrome’. The absence of crossover training is almost entirely due to the inability of certain senior ATC officers who refused to even attempt to understand the benefits and consequently never really pressed for such a system to be implemented, despite a number of overtures from SRG. The work being undertaken now by HR is welcome, but will probably be too little and too late.

The suggestion that military ATC in the UK could be contractorised to a civilian organisation is interesting, I take it you don’t recall what happened when this was tried at Boscombe Down? Firstly, comparable civilian controllers will cost more and secondly where would you find them? Currently, NATS cannot recruit, train and retain enough staff to man their own units and are already ‘poaching’ as many staff as they can from the RAF in an attempt to solve their problems. Also, there is no ‘pool’ of competent licensed civil controllers sitting around just waiting for a job to come along, if they’re any use, they’re already in work and are unlikely to be tempted to work in the kind of free-for-all operations in the open FIR that characterises RAF ATC – particularly for the sort of money that would be on offer.

The real threat to current RAF ATC is not actually a serious lack of numbers, although current trends do give cause for concern and options to address the shortfall are being considered. The real threat is actually the extremely low levels of experience at RAF ATC units, which has just got continually worse over the years and yet is just ignored as long as the ‘numbers’ stack-up. Nothing will ever change until the real issues of some form of specialist pay and cross-over training are addressed, but these cost money, so it’s much easier to adopt the same policy that has always been employed – ignore the problem, hope that no incidents take place which could be a result of inexperience and then with any luck it’ll all go away.

[John Purdey]

5KSTROP.
I think you had better stop going to Beer Calls.

[Chicken Leg]

I was once told that the RAF have more personel per airframe than any other air force on the planet and having worked in Aldergrove for some time I can see that that is entirely feasible.

Chop em all, especially those idiot RAF Police bods who think that it is within their remit to tell me when I should or should not wear a beret!

:D

[3xGreens]

5KSTROP,

Picked you up on another thread somewhere this week. Just wondered why you as a brown job should be at all concerned about RAF manning levels.
The standard of your grammar,punctuation etc also reminds me of another chap, isitd I believe he calls himself, although he has been quiet for awhile now. Did you two go to the same school or are you his doppelganger ?

[Pontius Navigator]

Proletarian,

I agree with all you say but . . .

my contractor is offering ATC services and we ARE short of controllers. I don't mean to imply that all ATC will go grey suit. We need green suits to sit in windowless control towers like Kabul International etc.

[Impiger]

Ponitius

How about the Norwegian solution then - ATC are civilians but are also all (?) reservists therefore they can be called out to go to Kabul etc.

Interestingly the next team into Kabul will be the Icelandics taking over from the spike helmeted box headed ones. The Icelandics will all be civvies.

Personally I think it would be a sad day to see RAF terminal ATC made civvie - big loss of rapport not to mention the odd cute thing around the mess.:ok:

[Fg Off Max Stout]

The thread title implies that Whitehall plan ahead on defence matters - such suggestions can only possibly be tabloid sensationalism. The truth is that important decisions are only ever made on the hoof and about 24 hours after the events that trigger them.

Talking of forward planning: cutting the number of Typhoids. It's easy to save some cash now by reducing the order, but what about 10-15 years down the line, when 10-15 of them have been crashed or shot down, and 20 of them are christmas trees, robbed so that the rest of the fleet can share around a few serviceable engines and black boxes. We'll wish we had a few more then, but IF it's possible to get them they'll cost twice as much as buying them now.

Ask a politician about foresight and he'll think it's the thing in a jar of formaldehyde in his bedside table. Happy New Year.

[Pontius Navigator]

Max, we will probably get a lease back from the Ities who will take some part used F3s in exchange.

[I_stood_in_the_door]

3xgreens

hello old boy!

whilst punctuation and grammar are not my strong points (see earlier post) good wit, innane banter and a solid professional opinion are almost guaranteed! throw in endless friendship to boot, too!

ah, tarquin. on the whistle, over the top you go, old chap!! and thank the lord for the royal flying corps!!
what with massive reductions in the raf and the ever increasing expansion of the green machine, are we about to see the re invention of the wheel? bi planes et al?

lfogootfw!

:8

[Impiger]

FO Max Stout,

I'm not entirely sure that cancelling tranch 3 of the Tyhpus virus will save us loadsa money. Some, for sure, but I understand the multinational aspects of the contract are such that if we reduce and the other nations don't then we pay a disproportionate amount of their R&D costs - in effect we discount their buy.

Believe this is an area where no one wants to blink first and all four nations must blink together - of course they may have already done that and I'm behind the curve: haven't been able to get too worked up about FCA/Eurofighter 2000/Eurofighter/Typhoon for some years now!

[Whipping Boy's SATCO]

Pontoious, I would be very interested to see how your "contractor" could resource ATC services as I think you will find there is a dearth of controllers across the board. Colour of suit/uniform matters not. The problem the MoD faces is that, in such a market place, it is almost impossible to recruit, retain or provide an effective service on the cheap.

[SirPercyWare-Armitag]

Hm lots and lots of valid points but what worries me is that all you splendid chaps have presented sound military and even financial reasons why cuts shouldnt take place in certain areas.

However, these cuts will be made by Civil Servants and politicians who can only recognise savings at face value. Retention, recruitment, morale and efficiency are meaningless when it comes to the jolly old chop.

Contracts are in vogue and the disasters that have befallen the medical and catering branches of all services have been ignored.

Sigh, its a cruel world

[Pontius Navigator]

WhippingBoy,

I am not in line to help the contractor recruit ATCO. Anyway he is an ex-engineer, what would he know?

Nice thing about contractors though is we say what we want, he offers us a price, we accept and game on.

If he can't find the bods then he has to pay us to hire blue suits to him. OTOH if his costings are realistic and we think he cannot deliver or we cannot pay then game off.

Cut will come. Think what we may of buffoons etc the numbers needed to do 'the job' year or year will always be less. The 200 odd V-Bombers could do the buizz that took 1,000 Lancasters etc years to even start to do.

A Hunter could shoot down a bomber - maybe - maybe by day. By night we needed a Javelin. An F4 was credited with the capability of shooting down 3, ergo One F4 equalled two Hunter and Javelin. As the number of targets reduced so too could the number of interceptors needed.

As we get more gas fired central heating we needed less coal miners. Change happens and people lose jobs. Sad but true.

[HOODED]

Pontius,

"If he can't find the bods then he has to pay us to hire blue suits to him."

I see a problem here. Contracturalisation means we get rid of the blue suits to save money! The engineering side is now coming home to roost as 10 years on the contractors are struggling to recruit ready trained ex RAF guys to replace the guys who are now retiring. They therefore run light(Cranwell) or start training resulting in increased costs (St Athan). These costs are then passed on to the customer, the RAF, who then realise it's cheaper to do it with RAF guys. Unfortunately they've got rid of em all!

Wonderful thing these short term cost saving measures, they allways seem to end up either costing more medium/long term or we have to accept a reduced service (late delivery after maintenance/less ac on the line than contracted).

Most ex RAF engineers go on to other things (plumbing HGV driving etc) as the pay the contractors offer is usually a living wage minus your hard earned pension!

I await the contracturalisation of the ATCO's with interest!:uhoh:

[Pontius Navigator]

Hooded,

Yup. My contract has just gone up threefold. Yes again, where do we get the manpower to take it back in house. Remembering for each new plumber we recruit we need another bod to look after him - 1/2000th of a cook, steward, p-staff, medicm doc, padre, storebasher, trainer etc.

How about when we move a unit? Take the F3 OCU. Simple we'll move the whole ish to Scotland. Only problem none of the sim instructors were light blue and they would not move. Sure there may have been another set of recently retired potential recruits in Scotland but then you have to pay redundancy in Lincolnshire too. Simple solution.

They didn't move the sim.

[Impiger]

Pontius

Only partly right I'm afraid. They didn't move the Sim to Leuchars because it wasn't cost effective to do so. The OCU only has a 2-3 year life expectancy at Scotlands most glorious station and that just wasn't long enough to amortise the cost of relocating the Simulators - we weren't sure they would survive the move in any case.

[5KSTROP]

3 x greens
I thought you may like to know that I am infact the one the only 5KSTROP......booo hooo I hear your leather clad, nipple pierced, sandwich grilling, chicken chilling got a rash need penicillan house boy cry, we were so sure master! he was in IsItd.
NO sorry just plain old me. A badly punctuated, slack excuse for a grammatical wash out never mind eh ISITD, peep peep "shot of rum and tally ho old boy lets bosh the hun whattttttttt".. toodle pip. Brown job, like it quaint I feel, why the interest in lyneham well I'm just nosey I'm told it seems to be so..:cool:

Any grammatical or punctuation errors WGAF, It Ain't no dissertation with good england etcetera etcetera
Oh YES HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL IN THE KNOW..