The rationale is to do with flying aerobatics. You’ll find that most civilian aerobatic pilots wear a parachute. The chances of an in-flight breakup are much greater with aeros; that’s also why these aircraft are designed with a canopy that can be jettisoned.
Whether there are statistics to back up the use of parachutes is another matter. You could say that parachutes are 0% effective in preventing cadet deaths in AEF accidents; but the sample size is too small to be meaningful.
I don’t think they exist (happy to be corrected); that’s what I was getting at in the previous post having had a quick look around at parachute availability.
As with all things in life, there has to be a cut off somewhere. If people would prefer it to be less safe, then by all means open the debate, but that isn’t the way aviation is going - certainly not in the military.
From a more practical point of view, it’s unlikely anyone too much under 35kg would see out of the front of the cockpit without half a dozen cushions.
Why parachutes - it’s part of the risk mitigation and adds an extra layer of safety that a lot of civil operators don’t have against quite a few potential emergencies (and not just obvious ones that involve going upside down). Just the same as wearing a helmet. The last incident that I believe led to the crew calling “check parachutes” (ie, prepare to abandon) was in straight and level flight.
Oh, sure, there are emergencies in which it would be nice to abandon the aircraft which don’t involve aeros. Fire, for instance. But ones where there is no alternative (a speedy forced landing followed by exiting the aircraft) are exceptionally rare.
I’m all for reducing risk (NB you don’t mitigate risk, you reduce it; you mitigate consequences). But not at the expense of either making the activity too costly to continue, or excluding cadets pointlessly.
Reducing cost? It’s already contracted and paid for.
To be fair, this is splitting hairs for a very small minority of cadets (bearing in mind that most “light” cadets at 13 still have time to grow!). As I said before, if they are that small it’d be bordering on the ridiculous anyway without needing half a dozen cushions, and survivability would be debatable too. Hence it’s not a pointless exclusion. As an organisation they/we aren’t able to ignore risks others may be able to take and accept (wittingly or otherwise).