How Many to Manage 41,000
 

How big does the senior management need to be to run a business of about 41 000 people?
Post SDSR
How big does the senior management need to be to run a business of about 35 000 people?

A few FJ, AT, SH and ISTAR ac plus a few other odds and sods.
An even small number of stns than we now have.

Why 2 Gps?

Er more like 25000 possibly less

I guess it all depends by how you define senior management. If you compare the RAF to BA which also employs around 40,000 people, they have 11 directors / top level management according to the Investor Relations part of their website.

I'm guessing we have way more than 11 people in what you might consider to be director / top level managers.

Although to be fair, if you compare the overall wage bill for 'directors' between the RAF and BA, I think the RAF would work out considerably cheaper!

Good question.

The comparison with BA is only relevant at the operational level. Many senior officers in the RAF are effectively outwith the RAF. I am thinking here of those senior officers in NATO or International appointments, in appointments in embassies throughout the world.

There could be an argument for transferring the establishment costs from the MOD to the Foreign Office. For those in International appointments the costs will no doubt fall to the MOD so these should be questioned - do we need an AVM in SHAPE responsible for WMD? Is this a true military appointment that is important to the MOD or is it of importance to the FCO?

At a lower level, do these International HQ need military personnel in the national support units or could they make do with a contracted staff?

41,000 - 35,000 - 25,000? I'm finding it difficult to grasp these figures - what's the current strength (roughly) and are these projected figures? P-N do you happen to know what the strength was in the mid 60's? I seem to think it was well over 100,000 then. I do know there were 26 group captains at Changi when FEAF was there - more than one per squadron in theatre - so we were probably just as top heavy then, pro rata.

Don't know how accurate this is - but:

R.A.F. Manned Strength (Hansard, 2 July 1968)

I seem to remember the RAF being about 180K in the 1970's.

Pontius makes the point of Embassy Staff - If the EU gets its way surely even they would be restricted to very few British "EU" Embassadorial posts?

And NATO posts might be replaced by "EDA" posts...

Wholigan - that is just showing off!
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Really impressed how quickly you came up with that link - thanks.

As I thought, over 120,000 in the period I was thinking about.

Still, we were still bearing the white man's burden then.

Oops :oh:

The number of Group Captains could certainly be trimmed.

By a lot!

I take it you are one of the hallowed sky gods and are unaware of the Trades the other Branches have to manage to ensure we have capabilities beyond where the contractor will go to when we need to.

Those trades will be supporting one of those capabilities. They are crucial, just like the sky gods.

However, do the RAF Police need a Gp Capt and an Air Cdre? Will the world stop turning if trade sponsors drop from Air Rank/Gp Capt to Wg Cdr?

Could trade sponsors be combined a little more effectively than at present?

Let's go back to.

Sqn Ldr's running Squadrons.
Wg Cdr's running Wings
Gp Capt's running Groups etc.

Stick with that formula and delegate...

Top neddies down by 70%..

My Head of Branch carries out his role as an additional duty. My Branch Sponsor is a Sqn Ldr working to a Wg Cdr who covers 2 x (very large) Branches. The Trade Sponsors are WOs. Seems fairly reasonable.

TBM,

You'll find that the ground branches already have flt lts running flts (of up to 100 personnel), sqn ldrs running sqns and wg cdrs running wgs.

While I tend to agree that there is a degree of pruning (pruning, geddit?) that could reduce OF5s and above (and it'll be interesting to see if the 'Command Structure Review' that's ongoing at High Wycombe really makes deep cuts in senior officers), the cry to cut large swathes generally comes from those who have absolutely no idea of what they do - and therefore no understanding of the impact for the Service if they went. (long sentence - no wonder I was a 'C' at ISS!)

PR10 already has us planned at 38500 before PR11 and SDSR:ok:

TTN, IIRC it was 139,000 at the begining when I joined. There was a spilling of ..... skills in the late 60s with the demise of fleets such as Hastings, Argosy, Bassett, Beverley, Valiant, Javelin with a redundancy programme aimed at the non-FJ fraternity. It was quite swingeing with voluntary redundancies amongst aircrew with the exception of FJ crews, and compulsory redundancies for sqn ldr and above.

Some flt lt were promoted into the redundancy bracket just 6 months before the axe!

There was a further culling on Britannia crews and a reduction of assimilation in the late 70s and more redundancies in the early 90s. This time the mad axe man chopped out whole trade groups even when some of that trade were gainfully employed outside their trade - sim techs flying in the E3 for instance. IIRC the RAF strength at the start of his was 98,000 and slashed with the peace dividend and outsourcing to 57,000.

Although now only half the 1960s strength, which included a lot of national service make-weights, the 1990s strength was probably more effective in parts such as RAFG and Air Defence. AT could also lift more further, faster, and more safely. Maritime was vastly more effective being able to reach further and faster.

Cutting the RAF teeth even further would not necessarily lead to even greater loss of effectiveness. Already one FJ CAS aircraft can offer about a 75% chance of target destruction whereas in the 70s 4 Buccanneer could offer only a 40% chance of killing one tank.

TBM, nice one, of course we did rank/post inflation back in the 50s and 60s to get a rough balance between pay and responsibility. Now, take a sqn of cheap fast jets, say GR4s. Place a value on the sqn for aircrew, ground crew and the hardware. Now what pay would a civilian organisation give to a department head with that size responsibility?

Tripple it for a wing. Add in the base support elements and double it for a station. You should now be in BIG money.

However lets stop about there. It was a joke in Maritime that St Mawgan had a Gp Capt in charge of a station with one squadron and he answered to an AVM an SouMar with that one sqn, who in turn answered to an AM at Group.

As almost all aircraft types are located on single bases lets retitle each base as a wing, commanded as you suggest by a wg cdr, aka OC EAW.

Now gather each similar role EAW into a group commanded by a group captain and all within a single command structure commanded by no higher than a 3-star. That way you would have the AFB and CAS senior and not equal to the RAF operational organisation.

But having downsized the ranks against the responsibility how would the pay-reward be equalised with private industry?

How about command pay? Pay all group captains at a flat rate of, say, £100k, but pay those few in command of groups an additional command pay of say £50k. Same rules as flying pay - you lose it if not in that appointment. You know that you get an extra £50k per year while you are the gp commander and will lose it when you are tourex.

But if you merit promotion to air cmdre your flat rate pay will be £150k; if not then you have a choice :}

Apply this command pay logic all the way down to sqn commanders - bonus in post, no loss of pay on promotion to the next higher rank, bonus if you get a further promotion or a new command post.

Oh well, one can dream.

Down Under we have Navy four bar Captains driving Frigates in many cases. The old war canoe Melbourne [ +15 aircraft+ 1400 sailors] had a Commodore while the USS Midway sailed by with 80+ air vehicles + 6000 sailors driven by a Captain [4 bar].....

top heaviness is the problem chaps. If you have the numbers then the command structure goes with it....

Pontius
 

;)

Slightly off topic

Am I correct in thinking that the last National Serviceman was discharged in December 1960?

Phil.