I trust nobody at Kinloss is wearing a growbag these days....

In my case it was simply because I was no where good enough, I know and accept that, others would do well to cotton on to that as well :ok:

Getting over not quite cutting it seems to have left quite a bad taste :rolleyes:

My bold - pilots are not recruited just for their pole waggling skills. They have to pole waggle (ooh-er) whilst considering higher commanders' intent, making decisions on ROE, prioritising between conflicting taskings, etc, often whilst outside communication range of their 1-up.

I know that Cpls and Sgts do all of the above (apart from pole-waggling) as team and section leaders in the Army. However a single aircraft is at least the equivalent of a platoon in terms of firepower, area of influence, and potential for scrutiny if screwups occur - and platoons are commanded by officers. The fact that the AAC use NCO aircrew is a reflection on a different command structure whereby the aircraft can be considered to be under command of an officer on the ground.

I agree on one point though, which is about the number of 'eggs' that we currently test to find the 'good eggs' that will rise ever upwards. We train far too many aircrew; hence we end up with aircrew officers all over the place in instructional or made-up staff posts. We should be bolder in identifying the 'stars' early and getting them moving up, leaving the 'others' stable on the front line and giving productive service rather than attempting to 'broaden' them in the name of career progression. Perhaps something like the Navy's twin-track officer progression?

We have it already. Its called PA.

VR,

But you can only get PA after spending 15-20 years 'pretending' to be interested in a career. For right or wrong, in the early days of an FJ career, those who express no interest in career development are quickly put out to grass to make room for new 'eggs' in the 'good egg' hunt. PA have historically also been amongst the first guys to get the boot when more room is needed.

Chip..........moi.........care to expand miss :p:p:p:p:p

... aha! So it's back to the days of the Supplementary List and 38 year old Fg Offs (Nah mate, don't take the B Exam or you'll get a ground tour AND be made Mess Sec)

Fighter Controller? Why on earth would I want to be a Fighter Controller when I am perfectly happy being an ALM:ok:

Beg to differ (I was going to put it less politely, as would AJ in his days as an NCO pilot).

If I might make 2 comments...

EGDG - As far as I can see SFFP said 'because I was nowhere near good enough' which would appear, at least to me, to be a rather humble position to take, especially considering he made it as an ALM which basically means he passed most of the selection process...he failed (if he went for pilot/nav, some go straight for NCO) on officer like qualities and/or leadership. Suggesting he has a chip on his shoulder suggests, to me at least, that the chip is actually on yours.

Easy Street - J***** H C***t, you need to get out more and see what NCOs are capable of, that's the most arrogant load of complete twaddle I ever heard. On a multi crew aircraft like Nimrod (where we mere mortals tended to go) NCA would be a significant part of the loop, fully aware of ROE's (and unlike SOME officers quite capable of deciding whether we were complying with them or not without having to ask Mummy) and quite capable of making decisions. MAEOP's terms of service include the requirement to shepherd and guide junior officers - an acknowledgement of what any decent officer knows, ie that an NCO or WO with significant years under their belts has a bloody good grasp of the RAF and their job, and is more than capable of making a part time officer (you know, the ones who leave by age 38) look a prat if required.

In fact the realisation of the above leads a fair number of us to **** off into civvy street where we tend to do rather well, last time I bothered checking my 12 man NCA course produced at least one FJ station commander, I recently spent 10 mins in the pub chatting as a result of a chance encounter to a fireman... sorry, now a Squadron boss.... another is a civvy airline pilot... ALL people who were, in my view, incorrectly filtered by OASC. Others go to civvy St and tend to do rather well.

Sorry to be so blunt and aggressive, but that was the most patronising load of drivel I've read on here in a long time. I'll back my decision making skills and intelligence against yours any day - as an ex NCA I am THAT confident.

Dave

SFFP has in the past expressed some opinions, many have annoyed me so - if annoyed enough - I replied to say,
what he posted here did not deserve your comment.

Yes I'm the past, I have a decent brain, I'm not afraid of decision making, and when it all goes south I acknowlege it with a self deprecating joke for the most part.

I'm not the best guy on the planet by a long chalk, but I don't think I'm all that bad overall. I consider your post unworthy frankly, as I was in support of NCOs becoming pilots and objecting to those who seemed to believe that NCOs wre incapable of making difficult decisions or handling the technical side.

Or to put it another way,
you muppet.

Dave

Agreed.
Dave

Surely those days are long gone?

BEags,

The UK-based HQs have indeed been downsizing over the past few years. The made-up staff posts can be found in the various Expeditionary Air Wings and Group (nothing like writing useless service papers in a dusty office in the desert to enhance your promotion prospects!). And the reason why we keep needing new pilots to be trained is that we post guys away from the front line after only 2.5 to 3 years - generally to be QFIs! Self-licking lollipop is a phrase that springs to mind.

davejb,

I fully acknowledge the role played by NCO aircrew as members of the airborne team, especially in the maritime role. However you would (rightly) expect the officers to carry the can if you (for example) torpedoed the wrong submarine. You can educate me here - were there ever any situations where you could have released a weapon without the consent of one of the officers on board?

My point was that assets as "strategic" as aircraft should be held accountable at least the same rank level as an army platoon, which means being under the command of an officer. By "strategic" here I mean scarce, wide-ranging and high-impact. In the days of the NCO pilot, aircraft were not scarce in the modern sense, and individual airframes had nothing like the destructive or intelligence-gathering powers of today's platforms.

And finally, with tongue firmly in cheek, if pilots could be NCOs, why couldn't rearcrew be SACs? There are plenty of SACs out there with highly specialised technical training, after all!

Quite right. The Corps have been doing it for years, saves a bundle. Although the scheme to employ Corporal pilots wasn't popular, it raised a few eyebrows when two of us would pitch-up at an RAF station in our borrowed Lynx.

I once got a 'lift' from Ballykelly to Aldergrove in an AAC Sioux. The pilot was a Corporal - in the Catering Corps! Top pilot.

No, the pilots controlled the bomb doors - end of story.

On the V-bombers control of the bomb doors could be given to the Nav Rad but only with the consent of the pilots. In fact control wasn't so much as given to the Nav Rad as to the computer.

AFAIK it is similar in the fast-jets, only one weapons selector panel and only one jettison switch - certainly in the F4.

That's certainly the case PN, though it's fair to say that I as a wet man, or davejb as a dry man could cause a weapon to be dropped in the wrong place or on a friendly target. No, we couldn't actually push the button from where we sat but if the intent had been there ...

I would think that the SNCO AH pilots/ commanders would beg to differ. There is no justification for NCA to be SNCOs, this is a WW2 POW legacy, the same way that there is no justification for commissioned pilots, the AAC seem to cope quite well with both and the RAF seemed to cope quite well during WW2 with both.

Bit in the Sunday Express about redundancies being announced within the the next six weeks,with Kinloss being mentioned in particular. Unlikely but not unimaginable. Most people I've spoke to seems to think it'll take six months before anything would happen, personally I think it will be much quicker than that. Desk O's spend most of their time effectively grading people, getting to know the wheat from the chaff, compiling lists of A-graders and 'waste of rations'. I bet most Desk O's could have produced their lists of 'those to go' within hours of SDSR, probably as quick as it took to open the excel file and print it off.

Very true but would you have risked an interview with Mick Muttit or Derek Murgatroyd afterwards? :}

Those in the frame for redundency should have had an email detailing the timeline.

It certainly isn't 6 weeks....

No,
no NCO in a Nimrod could drop a weapon, you had to be an officer, and that's because it was set up that way.... had Nimrod crews been constituted of 12 Air Marshalls and one SAC steward then you'd have had to be a 3 * to drop a torpedo.... a more sensible question is 'does the need to drop weapons preclude the use of NCO navs/pilots' - and the answer is still no.

As some have mentioned WW2 then the destructive capability allowed to WW2 NCO bomber crews compared quite favourably with that of the Nimrod, there didn't seem to be any overrriding concern back then... and I'd argue that the modern NCO (aircrew or groundcrew) is proably rather better educated on the whole, and has a better idea of what they are there to achieve, how it fits into the overall plan, etc. so is probably more capable of making sensible decisions on engagement.

On Nimrods we killed subs and ships (for the most part) in the simulator - the lead dry and lead wet, at least, would have no hesitation in butting into the conversation if they did not agree with what the crew were about to do.... to be perfectly honest we'd have considered 'who had the release button' a fairly trivial detail.

Rear crew SAC - you'd probably still attract a percentage of likely NCA candidates, at 18 years old the flying is the attraction for many. Whether you'd be able to retain them is another matter, I very much doubt you'd get the vast resources of experience on squadrons (if we still had any) that we do (just) have these days, once the initial glamour of reeking of hydraulic fluid had passed. I don't know if you'd get sufficient candidates who could pass the selection process, but you might well - especially if you don't want anything like as many as you once did. There's more sense behind this idea than that something about a commission makes you magically better at decision making.

Dave

Very true but would you have risked an interview with Mick Muttit or Derek Murgatroyd afterwards?

- Ah, they were pussycats! I flew for a while with Mick as he headed for retirement and he was the nicest bloke you could hope to meet...annoy Spanners though and it'd be a different matter!

Derek too, however when our lead wet was promoted Mr M took him to one side for a full day briefing on the rights, wrongs and responsibilities of a MACR.

The Captain of a MPA can sometimes be a position that is probably unique in any military setting, in that he can give orders to a vastly senior naval officer commanding another unit.
Dark Blue did not like that one bit, but how we enjoyed it.

getsometimein

I agree that nobody will find themselves selling the big issue in six weeks time and the timelines will be much longer, however the view that manning are floundering around under the weight of situation and will take months and months to come up with the solution is IMHO very wide of the mark. I think lists will be out in fairly short order. Whether that a trawl for volunteers or more or a mixture of offers and outright P45's remains to be seen.

The rounds I remember had calls for volunteers from specific groups, types, trades, length of service etc with the possibility of compulsory redundancies later should the requisite number of volunteers not be forthcoming.

At the same time compulsory notices were issued to specific groups along the same lines but different from the volunteer groups. For instance some gp capt were made redundant but there had been no call for volunteers.

In the first group non-FJ navs could volunteer but none were made compulsorily redundant at the first call.

The timescales were in the order or 12-18 months which given the time for resettlement courses, terminal leave and annual leave make the 12 months really quite short.

Dont know if its my place to publish internal emails... But dont expect anyone leaving on a redundency package before April 12...

Perhaps a little less speculation, and a few more hard facts, are required.

I saw at work a few days ago a document, I believe it was a DIN, with some information on future potential redundancies post SDSR. It was split into separate sections for Civil servants and the military.

I believe it said that single service UINs would be issued "within 6 months". In the now obliqatory Q&A section it stated that redundancies would occur in three tranches, and was aimed to be completed by 2014.

I will try and remember tomorrow to check the title of the document, but it is widely available if you look, no doubt also on line - it is not a state secret. While the contents of this document may be overtaken by events, it shows the inital intent of the MOD - hopefully reducing speculation.

As to how quickly desk officers will have anything out for public consumption. Well, it will be easy for them to buy themselves some breathing space. If, as a desk officer, I think I will need to lose say 100 from trade X, then I can advertise 40 required in tranche 1 straight away. This won't embarrass me if my figure of 100 is not too accurate, and buy me a breathing space until tranche 2 is advertised to actually sort everything out properly.

Biggus, is this the one? [ARCHIVED CONTENT] Page not found which is the link to DIN 188 which is actually available in the internet or

http://www.nff.org.uk/pdfdocs/sdsr_r...yprogramme.pdf which says that 188 is only on the intranet but is available here. It does say in the heading Not to be communicated to anyone outside HM Services without Authority.


http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/33B5F...Provisions.pdf The detail is both odd why can you apply for compulsory redundancy?

The various links on each of the documents above seem to work as advertised allowing you to drill through to each relevant document.

PN,

Your second link certainly seems to contain most of the same data. The end of para 2 on page 1 refers to single service DINs being published in "aprroximately 6 months" and Q9 of the Q&As refers to the 3 tranches and 2014....

Any update to what the future might hold?

36 man crews on Rivet Joint or 12 on a Sentinel? Could be a way of securing a few jobs although it might be a little cramped. Otherwise the future appears a bit bleak.

Anyone heard what the crew composition of the future tanker might be?

I heard about 2x Wg Cdrs scurrying around Air Cmd trying to sort this out this week - looking at all sorts of posts and cross-overs. I guess a plan will be out by Xmas?

Still we have heard "It'll be over by Christmas" before!

iRaven

RJ might be an option for some, but will Sentinel be looking for many people given its limited life?

Anyone speak Korean? Could be a clincher.

Sorry to bear bad news,

But RJ will not be there for anyone until 2014 at the earliest. All the PICs are full for the slots between now and arrival of UK frames, so don't get your hopes up.

:(

PFMG,

If last week's brief was anything to go on Sentinel is a complete non starter as well.

There were enough AEop folk at last weeks WSOp Conf so there should be some pretty up to date gen available.

I believe that there are no spaces on 5(AC) Sqn for WSOps. Think they are already over their 5 slots at the moment. Not a safe bet anyway...no future after 2015.

I believe Tescos may be recruiting. Sorry.....I know it is not very funny but...take off the blinkers look around and take stock......smell the coffee beans!

Have to agree with Widger - why do WSOps/WSOs from Nimrod feel that the RAF owes them a job on another platform at someone else's expense? If they closed an ABM Unit they wouldn't expect to take over some Air Traffic roles so why should maritime trained WSOps be able to bump people from Sentry, Sentinel or RJ posts? I have sympathy for your plight, but no-one owes you a living these days, sorry.