The need will probably be to save money in the very short term.

Closing bases costs more in the first few years than it saves. Short term savings (for the RAF) include:

Fuel costs (fly less)

Wages (if you can get rid of people without it costing too much, reduce recruiting, increase natural wastage by not signing people on, etc)

Reduce spending on short term lead items, spares, etc.

Cancel programmes where spending has not yet been committed.




See post 69 by Vin Rouge in the "Will the Tories axe the RAF" thread, it will give you some idea of how much pooh we are in as a country!!

IIRC the Australians saved a few bob last year by breaking up for Christmas in the first week of December. I remember Finningley once doing similar wef mid Dec in order to save on heating and electricity.

If Future Brize is sucessfull; I can forsee it being used as a model for UK Airpower Plc. Perhaps Belvedere is simply simmering on the back burner. One wonders why the rumour appears confined to the RAF and not our green and dark blue colleaques.

Wrath wrote:

Why does the bowler have to be golden? Is it a term or condition? I ask because it isn't everywhere.

CG

WrathMonk- Nail, Square, Head, Hit..........

This is the best prediction of the next 2 years I have seen yet. It will be slow, it will have 'Carrot', it will be founded in logic.

It will be blatent suduction to a 'New Order'.

It will cast out the 'Old'......(What do they know?)

It will 'burn' books / regulations (Which challenge the view)

It will produce, a leaner, better.....World Order..... Eeeerhm.. Sorry, I meant RAF. Oh by the way, it will be cheaper to. (but Do the Same Job)

It will be, the final blow. Sadly.

"Ya Don't Get Nowt, For Nowt" (anon- Yorks. Trad.)


Advo

Rundancies very unlikely, and certainly not on the terms some would have seen in the last round. Less people - a certainty. 10-20% savings across the department - RAF probably more. Serious business this time, no 'bleeding stumps'. Keep speculating - some of you will be right.

Sign me up daddy-o!! Retire to a Scottish Island and become self sufficient and stick the 'V's up to the world!!

So, is JPA a big government conspiracy to axe 20% of us due to alleged fraud in not having the slightest clue how to put a travel claim in?

I do hope my golden bowler fits...

http://www.callmefatty.com/sitebuild...res/bowler.jpg

CG

Good point and I don't know. At the very least I would suggest that all those on pensionable engagements, and past an ORD, would get their 3 times their pension straight away (plus some form of compensation to cater for the 'artificial' cap on their final pension due to lack of subsequent promotion). 10000-ish made redundant at say £20K lump sum a head is still a £200 million wedge that needs finding. In previous such (military) "downsizings" the redundancy offer was seen as a way of encouraging volunteers - it always plays better in the press for the government to be able to say that all those that were made redundant were volunteers rather than 'pressed men/women'.

Strange, it seems only weeks ago that this board was full of rumours of mega-bucks payments for pilots to sign on. If this is still being taken forward by Air Command as well it will make for an interesting PR battle - imagine the headlines - techies / RAFP / PTIs (or insert any other trade) made redundant to pay for pilot bonuses.

Sad times.

Excellent idea - a use finally found for RAFP and PTIs.......

:E

Tongue firmly in cheek, of course

"IF" there were another round of redundancies, the scheme has certainly changed (not for the better) from the circa 18 months of basic salary plus normal earned benefits which was available in the last tranche 1, 2 and 3 during the late 90s and early 2000s.

It is now essentially 12 months of basic salary for those with more than just a few years in. Check out -

Ministry of Defence | About Defence | Corporate Publications | Personnel Publications | Pensions | Redundancy

Ginge

Ginge

I cannot find the rules for redundancy for AFPS 75 after 1 Apr 08 - they all say "to be issued". Have you any gen on this? It used to be 18months of pay...:eek:

B Word

http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/D9C0F...undancydin.pdf

This is the doc ref AFPS 75, issued in mid 2006.

Ginge

Ginge

I've seen this - it says "expires 31 Mar 2008"!!! :eek:

This just happens to be the day before the new rules come in, so I am none the wiser...

B Word

Wrathmonk

I left in the '96 Redundancy after 31+ yrs and so far I calculate that it has cost the Defence Budget in excess of £350,000 - and I still have 7 years to go to my "Three score years and ten". Costs today would be even higher because of wage inflation. Some of that money is, of course, retrieved by HMG in the form of taxation - but there is no guarantee that it will find its way back to MOD. There were, in addition, extra costs to HMG in the form of unemployment benefit at a time of high unemployment.

Then there are the hidden costs that do not appear on the balance sheet. How do you put a price on hard earned experience that prevents the Accident Rate from reaching an unacceptable level? When that experience is diluted by redundancy the Accident rate goes up.

A smaller RAF means less promotion - therefore more people leave the Service earlier and the experience level goes down even more. The result of that is an almost inevitable increase in the Accident rate. It also means an increase in extra duties for those remaining which again affects peoples attitude towards remaining in the Service. The result is a vicious circle which it is difficult to break.

Its all a far cry from 1965 when I joined and my daily rate of pay was 86.25p per day (before Tax and National Insurance).

Caz

Good job I'm not involved in the estimating the costs of a redundancy package then ;)! You are quite right about the loss of experience as an additional factor and I would suggest that is already being felt in some fleets and trade groups.

Still worries me that any manpower reductions will be done in a way that costs as little as possible to the budget. Compulsory redundancy with only the legal minimum as compensation. I know it is happening in the 'outside world' as the norm but that doesn't make it right.

How Many Air Officers?
 

No longer having easy access to an RAF List I can't find out how many of these worthies we have. If the answer is X than how does X relate to other RAF assets? Is it the number of Squadrons, the number of aircraft, the number of RAF stations/bases or none of the above? Hoping that any answers won't be a breach of security!

A2

Data as at 1 Apr 07 (because thats the latest I could find stats for all 3 [or 5]) is:

Aircraft : 740 (includes RAF SH assets, JFH assets and all military owned training aircraft (ie 140+ Viking/Vigilant but not King Airs etc). [Source]

Air Officers : 135 (126 by 1 Apr 09) [Source]

Flying Squadrons : 38 (includes RAF SH Sqns, JFH Sqns) [Source]

Ground Squadrons : 10

RAuxAF Squadrons : 19

I'll let you do the maths! I need to go and get a life (or a beer!)

None of this is secret - what would appear to be harder to find is how many engineering officers we have in the RAF. Used to be banter about one per airframe ....;)

A different take on the number of Air Officers; is it mandated anywhere that we have to have a certain ratio of Air Officers to squadrons/officers/ORs/aircraft?

They key thing should be whether or not these Air Officers are gainfully employed. After all, as the RAF gets smaller we might need less AOCs at the head of less Groups, but the number of MoD/exchange/NATO posts don't decrease.

As long as there's a job that requires the experience of a 1 star or 2 star, why should we be complaining that we're putting someone appropriate into it? We can't very well take a rotating NATO post that other nations allocate a 2 star to and give it to a Sqn Ldr to save money.

Many thanks for that information. It seems like a lot for a little!