Nope i am just thinking of the empire builders that we have in the organisation who will try and keep as much power as possible.
On that note. Who allowed the AT part to just be a blanket no to self authorisation? Will this be looked at in time?
I get that some AT activities can be a higher RTL than other activities. But i can take my cadets horse riding, cross country running or go karting but cannot take them walking down to the local park.
My wing sports officer will be loving life, but the AT officer will still be pulling his hair out.
Not entirely true - you can still do basic training in a local adjacent, safe area under your own steam as long as itâs within walking distance of the unit.
The other aspect to this from an assurance perspective is itâs easy for simple, led nav exercise in the park to mission creep into an unsupervised orienteering exercise whilst itâs chucking it downâŚwhich are two levels of risk.
Iâm not 100% clear on the logic of some of the choicesâŚ
Go Karting - cadets hurtling around a track at 30-40 mph⌠Thatâs fine. Low risk to life, Sqn Cdr to authorise.
Orienteering on the other hand⌠Hold your horses! That is dangerous! Must ensure that your WATTO signs it off.
It must be the inclusion of a compassâŚ
Remember - The Donald insists that we must all wash our hands after handling military compasses⌠Because the fool doesnât understand the difference between radium paint and sealed gaseous tritium light sources.
I spent some time discussing with SO2 AT the definition of adjacent given that there is no real policy for the ESF concept applying to AT (although some Wings have extended it as such, itâs really only a thing for fieldcraft at the moment and needs Regional auth anyway - although there is a suggestion of a wider ESF policy being brought in). The outcome of that is that walking distance is the intent of the policy; if you need to get a vehicle to drive to the location then itâs time for an application.
Clearly the interpretation of this may differ between Wings!
To which I am afraid I do not know the answerâŚand I agree it seems nuts. I has a similar discussion recently about fieldcraft on a DTE. A DTE which, if operating in an AT world, would require HML / ML qualifications to lead a group over that particular terrain. But in a fieldcraft setting - just a FCI. Who hasnât been trained or tested on nav, group management, incident management, weather⌠but can teach someone to paint their face. Sounds legit?
I guess becuase sports / FC are in the same place AT was 10 or more years ago before it adopted the NGB model for qualifications and just had the Competence Through Experience scheme.
One benefit is that SMS v5 will be able to update the levels of authorisation requires far more easily than was previously the case. In theory, it should be easier to amend the procedures, with SMS helping to provide the impetus.
We need another Moulds incident to shuffle the coals and get the fires at HQAC a-burning.
I seem to recall that in about 2001/2002 we were told people would need to have NGB qualifications by 2004(?) to do things, the selling point was we could do things and as long as they were within the remit of the qualification we would not need additional authorisation.
Whatever happened to that promise? Never happened and I donât think it was ever intended, just a selling point to make the aggro of NGB worthwhile.
Then HQAC discovered FTRS that has become a dumping ground for ex-RAF personnel to get âmoney for nothinââ.
Worth pointing out that we used to be trained in at least some of that stuff (group/incident management, weather, etc) when the ECO qual was a thing⌠oddly seems to have been dropped for reasons best known to the person who re-wrote the whole policy again.