A simulator In a centrifuge is being commissioned at Cranwell right now. It has interchangeable cockpits although I don’t think any ME types are included.

I suspect that any centrifuge will only be able to apply gz in response to its change of rpm and therefore not able to respond quickly enough to any simulator changes of g. Furthermore, it won't have any ability to provide the other forces that a normal 6-axis flight sim replicates.

Someone will be along to tell you that the decrease in chop rate is because the RAF can afford to be pickier about its candidates at selection given the gradual decrease in annual requirement and the increase in population, and because standards of instruction have improved (the same argument trotted out when GCSE and A-Level results were on their relentless rises a few years back, before some rigour was reintroduced). Well, the recent glut of pilot recruitment should tell us whether that’s true in a few years’ time. Personally I don’t find it credible that OASC, EFT and BFJT have simultaneously improved outcomes so noticeably. What I do find credible are tales of an incentive structure that encourages the contractor to chuck additional Hawk hours at students that would have been chopped in days gone by, especially when those tales come from Valley’s prime ‘customer’.

Huzzah! The ‘RAF’ now has four!

Still no news on how/what?

Are the ‘mutterings’ because the RAF students aren’t paying for their training whereas the civvy students are? Do they think the former are getting it for free? The taxpayer is picking up the tab and presumably at a price that L3 are content with. Maybe there’s a clause in the contract that penalises L3 for delays in the RAF courses? As a taxpayer I’m delighted that a contracted-out service is not being strung out but that the operator is getting on with things.

It does make a sharp contrast with that other contractor, Ascent....

Do I have this right; there’s apparently been a collision. This “proves” (to the usual suspects) the training system is off to hell in a handcart and the Phenom is unsuited to its role? Presumably all the other types mentioned can be banged together without issue? As for holding, I held for about four months before BFTS which was unremarkable then (mid 80’s). Why is any such period now seen as evidence of melt-down?

Word on the street is that the hold is is already longer than that and not getting shorter....

last i I heard is up to 2 years pre-EFT - with significant further holds before both Linton and Valley.

A little harsh on BV there...hardly his fault. Ascent on the other hand... wall, firing squad...etc.

i know a chap who clocked 8 years service as he completed the Typhoon OCU and won’t be staying past his option point. Not alone in that situation either. The system is completely broken and the hierarchy simply do not care. ‘Make it work!’...

P P ... that’s frightening!

I recently met a JP on a Typhoon Sqn, he said it had taken him 8 years from IOT to a FJ Sqn. As many of the RAF’s pilot entrants are graduates that’s reaching a Sqn at circa 30 yo, so what long term career/ promotion prospects do they have? Plus they’re likely to have a wife/ kids in tow by that stage so they will be understandably less keen on overseas detachments etc.

Lets not be too nostalgic about the ‘good old days’ though, holds between courses in the 90s were already getting long, I know of several people who completed Master’s degrees whilst waiting for the next stage of their training. However the current situation is far worse and the training system is well & truly broken at the moment. Whether Ascent can fix it properly & quickly will be the true test of the MFTS concept.

There’s a lot of harking back to the holding generation of the mid-to-late 1990s to (sort of) excuse the parlous state of MFTS. However a much less flattering comparison is with the state of the pipeline from about 1999 pretty much until the fateful SDSR in 2010, which is essentially what MFTS was meant to replace. It was not unknown to go from IOT graduation parade to the FJ front line in under 3 years around the turn of the millennium. Granted, EFT could be done while at UAS, but (unlike BEagle) I think that was a good system that bought back ~12 months of the ‘age penalty’ incurred by university.

I say ‘age penalty’ not because of career or promotion issues - clearly illegal these days - but because of the very real issue that outlook, lifestyle and commitments generally (deliberate emphasis!) change as the thirties are reached. By that point I’d done enough - two full tours and a ‘postgrad’ qualification - to understand what a future in the Service had in store for me and could commit myself to it. By comparison, someone facing those life choices as a first tourist has much less to go on; it’s small wonder that fewer seem to have the confidence in their future progression to stick around.

The long holds at the moment - even for EFT, for Chrissake’s! - are a waste of precious years of youth that should be spent deploying left, right and centre and gaining the experience that we so badly need. Frankly, the decision to recruit with no prospect of timely training was absurd to the point of negligence. The seniors responsible have left their successors with no good options: replacing all the holdies with fresh young recruits is probably illegal, while keeping them will make the front line into even more of a flat, we’re-slightly-too-old-to-be-enthusiastic place than it has already become. Thanks a million!

[By the way, I think the idea of getting more people out into civilian life before large pension and allowance liabilities are incurred is a reasonable one. But, you need to get your pound of flesh first... which we’re abjectly failing to]

As I’ve recently been on e-mail with an old friend from 20 Sqn in Singapore, in the context of a Reunion, the potential attendance list was amazing! And ... the aircrew back then (late 60s) had a high proportion of early 20s on their first squadron tour. How did we achieve that back then, without sophisticated simulators, if we can’t do it now? My aircrew mates had probably been in for 3 years or so, and there they were on Front Line sqns whacking Hunters, Canberras and Lightnings around the tropic skies.

Aplogies for old bloke input :(