Expeditionary Air Wings
 

EAW(S) as announced on the mod press pages today. Is this a fore-runner to become future wings of a combined British Defence Force ??

Soon won't be enough to generate a Corps :ugh:

I think (one of) the aims may be to instill a sense of belonging among 'non-formed unit' personnel on Stns.

If that's the case, not sure how much difference a new badge on your CS95 will make...

"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

Attributed to Gaius Petronus, a Roman General who later committed suicide. A.D.66


Everytime we get a new badge, new name or I am regarded as cynical for questioning perpetual change, this epitaph springs to mind. Well I'm going to introduce something new: Change Fatigue (TM) and I've got it bad...

Oh I don't know, it's all a bit of an adventure really. With the new EAW badge, I only need a couple of extra badges for my CS-95 and I'll have more than I did on my Cub Scout uniform when I was 9!

Quite appropriate really when you consider how we do operations these days - I think the tip top secret Iran meeting was to discuss how many boy scouts we were going to send and what colour their Op Certain Death badge would be

This plan has been trailled in the Air Power magazine, the Strike Bulletin and others. The EAW will bear historic role related numbers. One would guess that the Lossie wing will pick up the number of the Banff Wing if that wing was a numbered unit during WWII. This is really Archimedes field although I haven't seen him recently.

The idea is that the EAW will be commanded by a gp capt who typically is the stn cdr. The Wing will comprise its sqns, its forward organisation and other organic elements maybe the medical staff and ops etc. The rear echelon, Base Support Wing and depth logistic elements will form the home base support.

Looks good on paper.

It would have worked in GWI, not sure how it would work in a smalled scale situation such as Afghanistan. Where only 4-6 aircraft are deployed I cannot see what is different from now. A sqn does not have the requiste personnel to support a forward deployment without drawing from some of the existing base personnel and also additional NFU peeps. If all its support personnel come from its organic EAW this could leave the non-deployed EAW with critical manning deficits that could only be made up from . . . NFU?

Pontius,

Looks like it is back to the CVF for the EAWs. No need for all the manpower reqd for land based ops as it is already there in the ship. As far as I can understand from the blurb on the Joint Combat Aircraft era Lossie will embark its airgroup of 36 into HMS Queen Elizabeth and operate from the sea. No requirement for a huge airborne logistics train to get the a/c into theatre as it will already being contained within the task group. This should allow a good saving on the strategic airlift needed to get shore based airpower into theatre.

Surely a wing/station will not deploy with all its squadrons at once. I would have thought that an expeditionary air wing would consist of various roled aircraft much along the lines of a JHC Joint Force complete with headquarters! Does this mean an increase in establishments in order to make all UK station staff a deployable asset? Sneaky way to justify some extra LSNs rather than centralise a couple of PJHQ CAOCs, oops, we have those already! Maybe this is another tier of Comd that perhaps is not required................................

HEDP

According to the press release there are going to be a total of 9 Expeditionary Air Wings, located at 9 Main Operating Bases (MOB).

One of these will be at RAF Leeming; why on earth does one F3 squadron with a short life left require a Wing infrastructure?

Why not one at Brize Norton? Or do we not intend to deploy AAR anymore?

Apparently this is what its all about. The pretty poster does fail to mention what a happens when the single a/c gets shot down because we stuipidly scrapped its fighter cover.


http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/54251.../A4x300dpi.jpg

Not if it's a 'self-escorting' Typhoon with 2 ASRAAM 3 x BVR weapons (and maybe even a gun)... The sub-text of the graphic, to this cynic, seems to be 'why we have been right to cut back on aircraft numbers and haven't damaged capability in any way, shape or form by so doing'

I've not had access to the MoD pages, being on leave, but I would assume that the wing numbers will be drawn from those used in Normandy, the Far East, and the Western Desert/Italy (although no doubt some bright spark will completely forget that the RAF did anything in either of the last two named-theatres). The Banff Wing wasn't numbered, IIRC.

:rolleyes:

Obviously didn't have ISS in those days either..... :hmm:

HEDP

My thoughts exactly <<Surely a wing/station will not deploy with all its squadrons at once.>>

Remember the TV series yonks ago about a mixed force of aircraft types? Autonomous AD/SA? In the 80s I think, maybe even the 70s.

Then we have the FJOEU with multi-role types. Surely better to form Composite EAWs then you really are going down the CVS organic air route. Might even work, except the navy thought of it first.

Que Southside or WEBF.

BBC series 'Squadron'. Starred Malcolm Stoddard as the CO of '373 Squadron' and ran in 1982. The squadron had a flight of GR3s, one of Phantoms and another of Hercules (but, IIRC, lost the Phantoms in a round of defence cuts)

I recall this since I wrote a TV review of some of the series for a school project on 'my favourite Television programmes this year'.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0224531/episodes#season-1

The graphic is a bit suspect too, Brimstone, has it now got a dual mode seeker? Don't answer that question here folks, but a PM might keep me upto date if appropriate..........

HEDP

I seem to remember the Americans have some of these ?
It's total package (see link), a bit like having E.3D, Typhoon, Gr.4, Harrier, VC-10, Chinook/Merlin and Apache/Lynx/Harrier in a composite wing.
E.3D for AEW cover, VC10 for fuel, Typhoon to kill interceptors, GR.4s' to vandalise and generally blow things up, Chinook and Merlin to provide 'CSAR' and Apache/Lynx/Harrier for CSAR top cover
...never happen:}
'Squadron' was a fun series, A sadly lost friend was one of the Herc pilots.
Chas FK you're not forgotten. :)
link:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...usaf/366wg.htm

Archimedes, how sad. Welcome back. Have you been away?

Curious about Sqn as really it might be what is actually needed or indeed what actual could happen in theatre on an ad hoc basis.

Not as sad as the part of the review that noted that the camouflage on one of the Jaguars that made a fleeting appearance in the programme was RAFO camo rather than RAF...

Not been away, just ill to the point of being unable to find the will even to log on to Pprune.

EAW
 

This is just another tedious idea proposed by some half wit from staff college aiming for inclusion in the Honours List. The RAF has always been expeditionary in nature; its just that some locations have been more comfortable than others

Archimedes, hope you are better now. Regarding the dig at staff college, true or false? The EAW concept was, I think, in one of Brian Burridge's last Strike Bulletin's.

Forgetting the old rule that a platform can only be in 1 place at a time no matter how capable!