More penny pinching - JSWOC canned
 

I've just found out that the Joint Services Warrant Officers' Course at Shrivenham is being shut down as of October this year!

The Course was introduced as one of the recommendations from the Defence Training Review in order to give Warrant Officers of the three Services an appreciation of wider Defence issues.

The explanation given for axing the Course is manning numbers!

Given that the Course is run by 4 staff, the manning and/or financial benefit from the cuts would appear to be somewhat negligible. When I attended the Course a couple of years ago the Senior Officers Course (200+) was away in the US for two weeks at the cost of £1M +!!

The Course is extremely useful and informative and acts as an invaluable vehicle for WOs from all Services to exchange information and ideas. On top of that guest speakers have included Chiefs from across Defence and very senior MPs.

I think it's time to hand in the towel!!!!!

I expect there will be plenty more where that came from. It's not quite as bad as last autumn's ban on pay for the TA unless warned for call-up (which was only rescinded once it hit the press), but it's getting close.

I reckon this will be the first of many. As I'm feeling charitable I'll say I suspect it's an attempt by our paymasters to let the Treasury have morsels of cash whilst fighting to protect our capabilities. I'm not saying I agree with it - I wholeheartedly support the education at all levels with regards to wider defence issues. I suspect it's going to get worse. Wait until the expected pay freeze for all public sector workers hits the streets, this will seem like chickenfeed. :bored:

Grabbers,

you are hopful of a pay freeze?

If we get away with rebanded top rate income tax and a 5-10% pay cut I say we will be lucky!

163 Billion does not sort itself out without serious PAIN!:\

Cutting the JSWOC
 

Don't know what the budgetary trade off for this could be but it seems pretty shortsighted.

Warrant Officers are just a bunch of REMFy blanket-stacking middle-men. Spend the savings on frontline Red Arrows and Typhoons - much better value!

Happy Kitwe?

Please Don't Feed The Troll
 

VR

I am indeed hopeful of a pay freeze. I cannot see how any govt could justify a pay cut of 10% and still hope to profess the Defence of the Nation as their top priority. The thunder of boots heading for the exits would surely cause someone to wake up, wouldn't it? Now, it's not as if there is already an unofficial policy of nibbling the military to death is there....?

I work for the police and normally when you are regraded and the new pay scale is lower than your current scale they freeze you at your current level, You remain there until the new pay scale has risen to the one you are frozen at then you resume on the pay scale for the grade.

Grabbers,

And what would all those boots do? There arent going to be any jobs. The mod will tell them to pop off on their bike, as they would be doing the budget a favour. We are facing a pretty deflationary environment, excess supply and too little demand.

I dont understand how reducing salary reduces our capability abroad? We get paid less, doesnt stop us performing to the same level does it?

From where I am sat, we are pretty flush with bods at the moment, I cant imagine the retention issue to be significant whilst the next government are taking a scythe to disposable income and public expenditure.

Clicker, we had the same, being military it was called 'mark-time' pay :)

Typically an ex-ranker, on being commissioned, would be earning more than his commissioned compatriots. He would mark-time until pay rises and/or increments took their pay up to his level. It could mean a year or more with no pay rise.

Grabbers - irony...
 

I was being sarcastic...

JSWOC is money well spent - but instead of spending a few million on worthwhile frontline troops like JSWOC and TA (and indeed the ultimate deterrent - RN nuclear) we spend multi-billions on worthless projects like the Red Arrows and Typhoon. Nothing "trollish" about that point of view...

TS,

I'm sure people have asked before (and I don't want to appear belligerent), but what do you think would be a better solution to our air defence needs than Typhoon? Bearing in mind the full spectrum of threats from hijacked airliners a la 9/11 through to Tom Clancy-esque rogue Russian bombers?

Trim Stab, if you need to explain it, it isn't irony. Just a statement.

5 forward 6 back, Noooooooooooooooooooo

Grabbers - still head in sand eh?


As I have said many times before - Typhoon cannot defend against 9-11 type bombers, nor rogue russian Bears. They would not even be off the runway before the threat had been identified.

Only good intelligence can identify threats before they enter our airspace. The cost of Typhoon is many, many times the cost of MI5/MI6 and GCHQ combined. Typhoon QRA in their current form are profoundly misplaced resources as they could never react in time to a hijack over central London.

As for the Red Arrows - enough said...

Sorry Grabbers!

I'm not an air defender, but I can't quite wrap my head around that. I can appreciate that a last-minute hijack could feasibly defeat our reaction times, but if they couldn't even deal with a rogue bomber or something, why does ANYONE bother with air defence fighters?

I thought you were going to recommend a buy of several million cheap F16s instead or something. What would you have instead of Typhoon?

Look what you've done. :eek:

A very good point - we don't need them any more. We can't defend against last minute hijackers except through good intelligence and security preventing the original departure. The huge costs of air defence are best spent fostering diplomatic, intelligence and commercial links to absolve the iniquities and grievances which cause these risks.

JSWOC went as part of a saving demanded of the Defence Academy. My understanding is that it was a decision taken with much regret, but deemed to be the least evil of available options.

It would not have been saved by binning Typhoon, the Reds, CVF, CR2, FRES or anything else - not, given his grasp of the big picture (it's more a small miniature) that I expect TS to accept that for a nanosecond. :ugh:

Actually the big picture is that we don't face any threat from a near neighbour enemy state - for which Typhoon was intended when the programme was set in stone towards the end of the cold war.

We do face a real threat from unconventional asymmetric attacks, such as (more sophisticated) 9-11 hijacks, or from proxy warfare by an unstable Iraq or Iran, or even a belligerent nuclear-armed Israel that feels that it has been cornered by international opinion.

We need a deep-reaching defence review that re-examines reality - not the opinion that has been entrenched into junior staff by those who wish to perpetuate pet-projects and the status-quo of dinosaur defence projects.

real shame that they are binning the course, some excellent speakers during the couple of weeks, and it was a very good way to get a better idea of how the other services work, thought this was what "jointery" was all about

Ah well