Military short of 800 pilots?
 

According to this NAO report. I didnt think there was as many as 800 pilots at full strength anyway!

Britain's armed forces are "significantly" understaffed in critical areas - including a shortfall of more than 2,000 engineers and 800 pilots, according to Whitehall's spending watchdog.

In all, more than 8,200 regulars are needed to bridge what the National Audit Office (NAO) describes as the "largest gap in a decade".

As of January, the country's full-time military was operating at 5.7% below target, according to the NAO.

Around 2,400 more engineers are needed, most of them as weapons engineers in the Royal Navy, 700 intelligence analysts and 800 pilots - especially in the RAF.

The NAO also identified 102 trades where there are not enough trained regulars to cover operational tasks without cancelling leave or training.

Problem areas include engineering, intelligence, logistics, pilots, communications and medical.

The NAO report criticised the Ministry of Defence's reliance on young recruits in lower ranks to develop and be trained over time.

A soldier from the 1st Battalion Royal Regiment Fusiliers leaves the security of the camp walls to conduct a dawn foot patrol in the Nahr-e Saraj district, Helmand Province, Afghanistan after leaving base Sterga 2. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Saturday October, 5, 2013. See PA story DEFENCE Afghanistan. Photo credit should read: Ben Birchall/PA Wire
Image:
The Ministry of Defence says the military has enough to meet operational requirements
This has not closed the gaps quickly enough, the NAO said, adding that a 24% shortfall in the number of regular recruits between 2016 and 2017 had worsened the situation.

Meanwhile, the percentage of those leaving the armed forces voluntarily has increased from 3.8% a year in March 2010 to 5.6% in December 2017.


But new demands, such as the increasing risk of cyber and electronic attacks, will "add to the pressure to increase capability in some trades that already have shortfalls" the report added.

Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: "In these uncertain times, it is more critical than ever that Britain has a well-staffed armed forces with the technical know-how to handle threats to national security.

"But the NAO report shows that the armed forces are woefully below compliment, especially in crucial areas like intelligence and engineering."

Ms Hillier said: "Without more innovative methods to attract and retain staff, the UK risks continuing with big gaps in capability and overstretching already hard working and crucial service personnel," she said.

NAO chief Sir Amyas Morse said: "The department needs to fundamentally change its approach to develop skilled personnel and address the long-established shortfalls that persist."

An MoD Spokesman said recruiting and retaining talent was a "top priority" and there were many schemes to attract and keep skilled personnel.

I heard there was a large tranche of Tucano Pilot Officers made redundant from the RAF a few years ago who may like another bite at the cherry...?

Problem is, they may have found other jobs by now!

They should ask their American counterparts how THEIR efforts are going resolving the same issue. :E

Just remember...
 

...money is NOT the answer.

Yeah right.

BV

Maybe chasing AAC pilots for a bit of chickenfeed flying pay which was supposedly paid in error was not the best plan?

Seeing as the RAO and NAO punitive action against them was the final straw in the PVR deluge!!

That nice Mr Corbyn must be pleased as he has frequently pressed for reductions in the armed forces. Of course if he ever gets into power we won’t need armed forces as we will never enter into combat.

BV, got to say, money wasn't the answer for me...!

I mean, within sensible limits. They could have offered to pay me £150-200k a year and I'd probably have considered it. But even an old-school FRI3 payment just isn't enough when the job starts to grind so much it's affecting your health.

There were a dozen things they could have done to encourage me to stay, but it seems no-one could be bothered; from my Flt Cdr, up through the station hierarchy, and similarly through the Manning machine as well.

I remember saying this to an ex-boss, whose reply was that the "dozen things they could do to make me stay are probably different from the next guy, and we can't do a dozen things for everyone." Thing is, I think that there'd probably be a lot of overlap there, and even doing one thing for some people might have been nice.

Everyone I know who's still in is speaking to people who've left about jobs and so on; and I mean every pilot I served with. 800 short now is probably looking pretty good compared to a few years down the line.

The perfect storm of AFPS 05/15 vs 75/15 in looming.

Once those that are currently caught in the AFPS 75 pension trap leave at their option point, the entire military will see people doing their return of service and then leaving.

Waiting 37 yrs for an immediate pension just isnt going to cut it for 99% of people....

It might not be about the money, but money is the answer. Better pay, better pensions and less penny pinching. It might not solve everyone’s issues but it will keep more people for longer.

As an 'Int O" who was attracted elsewhere, I did note that nobody ever from the posting Admin ever called me in and asked:
"Why are you leaving?"

On another occasion a "poster" in the West Country confided in me that he had a "difficulty" with my career profile , since he was not cleared in to know what I did!

Agree with the comments here, when I left there was no questions asked by anyone in the command chain. Which did surprise me after 23yrs service and consistent above average ratings.

Many that I know would consider rejoining as a civvie to fly in the military. It has been done in the Chinook fleet with some instructional posts funded by Boeing. Why not with other platforms?

It is not just pilots. I'm told that engineers on the Voyager, once they get their necessary licence, are poached by Air Tanker. Cannot understand why :)

Actually, when I joined the RAF in 1964 I have no idea what I was paid and did not care, All I knew was that it was sufficient for beer and a little Triumph Spitfire and, importantly, a nice aeroplane to fly very regularly. All over the World too.

Sharpened,

I am sure that is the case for many people, me included. I also include the reason why people used to join the military. It wasn't a job, it was a lifestyle and a job for life, career.

You would be housed, fed, clothed and looked after. In return you gave your life for Queen and country. At the end your career, you would be given priority on council housing list and a pension. Fair deal.

As others have mentioned many times, most if not all of the 'lifestyle' aspects have disappeared.

Some will say it was better then. No it was different and today's recruits have a different outlook and expectations. Good luck to them.

Sharpend
 

I have the greatest respect for you but I’m afraid your last post comes across with all the smugness of a fully paid up member of the baby boomer generation (or perhaps slightly before then?!).

You were doubtless able to buy a fine house for a relative pittance when you reached the end of your service. That is no longer the case. Young pilots nowadays will be lucky to purchase a boxy, new build 3 bed semi. That is why they are forced to look elsewhere whether they are loyal to the crown or not.

As an example. In my time alone (18.5 years in the RAF) a Flt Lt pilots salary (basing it on myself as a PAS Flt Lt compared to my contemporary) has roughly doubled. The average house price has outstripped that rise by a fair way.

Whereas in 1999 the average house price was perhaps 2-3 times the average salary it is now 7-8 times (these numbers are approximate but not far off).

So, whilst I appreciate your position and light hearted response I would suggest some empathy is required from, not just yourself, but anyone of your vintage when they attempt to make sense of the feelings of the modern generation.

I’m not trying to be a d1ck but it needed saying.

BV

BV, indeed, as a flt it i bought our last home before my pay topped £20k so the 2-3 multiple was correct. About 5 years later my house price rose at the same rate as my monthly pay. When we sold in February an Air Cdre made an offer but could not raise the mortgage.

Everything changes.

Isnt that what 99% of people in the UK do?

CG

CG
 

This thread isn’t about those people though is it?

As parlous as the pension situation is in Britain, it isn’t really relevant to this conversation.

BV

Quite right Bob- I just couldn't resist. Self-administered talking to complete!

CG

When I joined up the benefit was 3 :O 3 whole meals a day.

Yes, I kid you not.

That was great until I discovered

1.Bints
2.Beer

Had to realign my financial paradigms after that!

UK is not far from full employment

The military are clearly not a govt priority

The chance of "failure" is high

Better to go into finance........ live in C London, great lifestyle, little discipline......

GR, while it was not a benefit for which I joined, I think that was a pension of £401 pa at 38, 20 years hence. Once in of course it was unlimited chips with everything and the NS WRAF certainly had their share.

PN,


Assuming my reading of the initials is correct, were there WRAF National Service conscripts?

Indeed.

99% of the UK population stay in the same location for their entire careers,

can hand in their notice if they are fed up with the job,

they can tell their boss his leadership style is crap,

they have tenants rights,

Given the correct tools to do the job,

are compensated for nights away,

have houses fit to live in,

can have a private life,

can keep work and home life 100% separate,

have hotels paid for by their company up-front,

can refuse to do anything they are asked to do,

can plan their life more than a month in advance,

can choose to live where they want, are trusted to wipe their own backside,

Have a credit rating that doesnt have a plethora of addresses on it,

Dont have to move house every 2 yrs,

are not working 2 jobs but getting paid for one,

are not sent on bollocks courses,

can travel anywhere in the world without telling an adult,

can make decisions for themselves,

can provide their children a stable home life,

2 schools for their children’s entire education,

attend every wedding/birthday/funeral,

Never be asked to take a life,

and perhaps most of all never get shot at or put directly in harms way at the whim of a politician....

ValM, now that I don't know, I just assumed, but now you mention it, probably not. I do know they liked chips though.

BV, I suspect that, in many parts of the UK, the salary:house price ratio is even worse than your figures indicate.

Quite how anyone posted to the A330 at Brize will ever be able to afford a house in this part of the world is beyond me. 2 salaries needed, which is one reason local housing estates are so jammed with 2 cars per house - they were never built with that in mind.

I bought my house in 1984 for £36K; the inflation calculator indicates that it should now be worth £116K. But the actual figure is 2 1/2 times the calculated value.... Which is NOT something to crow about - it's an utter scandal. RAF salary as a Flt Lt with 8 years seniority was adequate to have a mortgage and a reasonable car, but there wasn't much left at the end of the month - so heaven knows how people can manage these days.

2 salaries? One of the chaps on my VC10 course was a first tourist with a young wife and was posted to 10 Sqn. At some early social gathering some old dinosaur's wife said to his wife "You must come to our coffee mornings" - to which she answered "No, I'll be at work". Then followed a look of horror from the old bat..."Work?". It seems that an officer's wife who had a job was an alien concept to her....:rolleyes:

Add the absurd house price factor to that the capped pay 'rises' of the past few years and it's hardly surprising that the RAF will have huge difficulty retaining anyone who has had the sense to work towards an ATPL and TR, so they'll be off to the airlines PDQ. Although airline salaries aren't what they once were either...

BEagle
 

You’re right about house prices. Very base dependent. They’re not cheap anywhere though. 4.5 times your salary on a mortgage doesn’t get you much. And you need a decent deposit and cash for stamp duty (potentially).

I can only speak for the FJ world but I’ll say it before someone else pipes up. It’s not the airlines that are the big draw nowadays. It’s the sunnier climes and jobs flying FJs on tax free salaries that has got everyone talking.

Add in the perfect storm of pension changes, flying pay changes and jobs in the Middle East and I suspect your average FJ pilot of the future will complete two tours and then call it a day around about their 10 year point. A few years in the ME to get a pot of cash to replace the gratuity that was still ten years away, buy a house (or two) and then work on a second career and pension pot elsewhere. They could still only be in their 30’s.

It’s sad and I think it’s a real shame but I’m afraid it’s all of the MODs own doing.

For me it all started when 170 students were made redundant in 2011. It wasn’t just the students that learnt a valuable lesson. All QFIs and current frontline pilots also got the message loud and clear that loyalty had just become a one way street.

There are some (me included) who still feel the overall package is good enough to stay. Just as I mentioned to Sharpend that he needs to empathise with the younger generation, current PAS and senior officers also need to empathise though. The overall experience I’ve had, which financially doesn’t stack up against someone who served twenty years prior to myself, is still better than that on offer currently.

I don’t see a lack of ‘Queen and Country’ loyalty and guys still have the enthusiasm to do the job. They just live in a much harsher reality where the skills they possess as a military pilot present far more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.

As I said, many of us that were serving in 2011 were blinkered enough to think life was rosy until the cull. Those that have joined since were probably never even issued the rose tinted specs.

BV

There was a perceptive view, upto 20 years back, that identified the pull and push factors in Service life, the young singlie enjoys the life, the excitement, detachments and employments and will put up with this turbulence as that was why he joined. Then, with maturity, marriage, children, financial responsibilities and a desire for stability, the earlier attractions recede. He no longer wants that turbulence and unpredictability.

Having recognised the differences did they make appropriate adjustments? I think the executive streaming was one attempt but I don't think the non-executive stream got the stability they sought.

Airline salaries aren’t that bad though!

200k for a long haul BA captain, 100k for a Thomson FO. ( both flying shiny new 787s) So where can you make that sort of salary in the RAF ? ( unless , of course, you get to the very top flying a mahogany bomber at MOD ,)

Maybe the RAF should go back to the old short service commissions. Not the 5/8/12 of the old DC (B) but a fixed term of say twelve years. They would have to get their training organised to get productive service out of them but they would know that they will have been taught to fly modern equipment which would ease there way into civilian life at a certain point.

As they are not going to be VSIs there is not lot of point of them spending a long time at Cranditz so you can go back to the old short ITS course. Get the flying training out of the way in two years or so then on a twelve year stint you will have them up front for about nine years. You will not have wasted training by them doing staff courses or administrative posts so their flying will repay the investment.

It is a kind of 'Specialist Aircrew' from signing up. You could also dispense with all the requirements for university education as there seem to be enough military pilots around the world flying very complicated bits of kit without that benefit.

A young, fit, naturally gifted pilot joining at eighteen knowing that he/she should be pat for an airline job at thirty.

We've been there before.

I think fareastdriver’s idea is probably the right one in the situation we now find ourselves. But...

This is only because we are so far down the road of civilianisation and ‘FTRSisation’ of so much of the second- and third-line, both air and ground trades, starting with depth maintenance and now encompassing QFIs in the flying training system and Voyager crews at Brize. Even tactics development jobs at the AWC and requirements jobs at Abbey Wood are being contracted out be done by the host of QWIs working for Inzpire. No doubt it’s great for the bottom line in the short and medium term, but the long term effect is that the remaining regulars get utterly thrashed in a succession of front-line tours and leave after getting cheesed off with all the time away. This is what has been hurting the USAF and it is almost certainly a significant factor in the problem highlighted by the NAO. Eventually this model will come crashing down around us, as future leavers will not have had any of the wider experience that makes the previous generation capable of filling these contractorised roles without additional training.

Trouble is, one of the NAO’s recommendations is to do more of this civilianisation thing...

Fareastdriver, Looks good to me.
I left school at 15 Got an engineering apprenticeship (TF!) 3yrs MN in hot noisy engine rooms (except around Helsinki in Winter when it was comfy) and, thanks to the inability of JFK & Kruschev to play nicely together, was accepted for RAF pilot training. How lucky was that?
I still raise a glass to those two.

You do not need a huge education to be a pilot, either mil or civ.

If you're going on to VSO then that's different.

Back at Lossie in the early 1980s, My Sqn OC called a 3 line whip at 1600 on a Friday - all to attend including the resting QRA crew. He demanded to know why, after his wife had volunteered the Sqn wives for flowers for that night's dining in night, had very few wives turned up that afternoon to "carry out this duty". He seemed amazed to be told that the wives did not come under his wife's command (nor their husbands), and was taken aback when asked if his wife had written to the local employers asking for the wives to be excused work that afternoon. It was interesting to note though, that those whose wives regularly attended the mess for wives social functions etc tended to get better ACR write ups than those whose wives didn't.

WD, and you forgot to mention that Mrs Fg Off could not mix with Mrs Sqn Ldr.

It at a nearby stn wives were required to attend a practice Royal lunch, but not the main event.

Or do you remember one period, about two weeks of intense activity, when Chris Booth said he had to go shopping that evening as they had run out of bread. He was quickly informed that we were all running out of food as our cars were on base and most wives had no wheels.

I cannot remember many wives working in my 1960-1978 service. Those that did ran away with their boss.

At our so-called meet-and-greet at the Bucc OCU, where we were totally ignored by the staff, a snooty woman asked the wife of one of our number "...and which course are you on?".

Mistake...BIG mistake. She'd asked a rather fiery red-headed Scots lass, who explained in words of half a syllable that SHE wasn't on any course, but her husband was starting his Buccaneer navigator course!

FED, really? Of course many wives were ex-teachers or nurses and in the 60s nurses and marriage didn't go together and I guess teaching posts were scarce, especially one requiring a car. Similarly WRAF had to retire so they took may have become unemployed.

Yes, on reflection you may well have been right with 'wives of' being marooned on the patch or caravan site. Remember the good old days on no quarter for officers under 25, quarters, frozen and unfrozen lists, points etc and no quarter for dets under 6 months. I was lucky, my poster juggled my courses and postings to give me 6 months and my overseas tour as a batchelor gave me the requisite points. Yes, things were better in those days :)

200k in what currency?!!

Even a long-haul Trg Captain doesn’t make £200k, probably more like £120k to £140k. Then they have to contribute to their pension unlike the Armed Forces who contribute 52% of our wages into AFPS - so a Flt Lt earning £50k gets £26k extra put into the pension pot per year. I think BA have just upped their employer contributions from 9% to 15% but that is still well short of our 52%.

The only way you will earn mega bucks in flying is to go to the Middle East for some tax free salary action - but then that is not for everyone (I politely declined some years ago). They also will get their monies worth out of you.

So, if you are thinking of going down the route of an airline pilot career, the work-life balance isn’t really any rosier than the forces - have a read of the BALPA blog if you don’t believe me:
https://blog.balpa.org/Blog/October-...alance-Pilot-A

As ever, we all have to make the choices that fit our own personal circumstances, but I don’t believe that airline flying is this wonderful Utopia with mega wages. It will be a job with many frustrations like any other.

CPL Clott

I recall chatting to a chum of mine who'd left the RAF and was then a Virgin FO on the 747. He was moaning that he wasn't entitled to a free parking pass at both Heathrow and Gatwick, only one or the other....and either had to leave his car and take the company bus or pay to park at the 'other' airport. Such hardship, he claimed...

"So when did you last do weekend SDO?", I asked him.

Beags

If he is anything like my Airline buddies then every weekend is a working weekend during the summer months! :eek: