I’ve no idea I’m afraid.
These questions are best being raised on the RAFAC Cyber Team on MS Teams.
1 Like
That all sounds well and good, but if I search MS Teams for “cyber” all I get is a couple of contacts and my own chats where it’s been mentioned; no ‘RAFAC Cyber Team’.
Is it by invitation only?
It should appear as RAFAC Cyber - if not you’ll need to get the Corps Cyber Officer to add you.
hi welcome to the forum, you must be new here?
Oddly I missed that update.
It is a different tack to the current offer. Seems oriented towards being a foundation for Gold rather than a qualification in its own right.
I suppose CyberFirst could have picked that up, but as per the thread title…
This, I’m a new CFAV (ex-cadet) working in the cyber industry. I know of at least a couple others near me either in “techie” jobs or apprenticeships who could help with this course.
The problem is we lack a proper SME structure with Cyber. We have wing teams for most things, but not cyber. I don’t want to get in hot water (again) for skipping the CoC, but without a Wg Cyber Off I’m not sure how best to offer my skills/experience to the Corps cyber teams.
Currently it’s all via the Radio Officers, and as seen in the Cyber update, the two seem to be getting rolled into one training syllabus with higher emphasis on Cyber.
Some wings have cyber officers; some have cyber under stem and some stem under cyber (and I know of at least one where it all sits under “IT”)
@babyofficer speak to your Wing training officer and ask them who is looking after cadet cyber training and they should be able to direct you.
I’m curious how does RAFAC radio and cyber compare with ACF and SCC radio and cyber training? Are they more or less the same? I don’t know anything about cyber, but am am interested in radios. Do all CFs use the same radios?
I don’t know what the SCC use but the ACF use 2 radios, a portable plus a backpack type HF.
Based on Elbit Systems kit:
They also have access to Personal Role
Radios (short range for use within a section).
So unlike the ATC they are provided and maintained at public expense.
They also follow Army radio procedures, which are a bit more practical (IMO). Cadets and CFAV also have access to radio courses via the Royal Signals at Blandford.
2 Likes
I did the ACF crossed flags signals course at Blandford! One of the few Air Cadets to get invited along to join the ACF. It was honestly one of the best courses I did as a cadet. The fact it was an ACF course speaks volumes. I also enjoyed beating them by getting the best scores on the DCCT range one evening 
But yeah, very high quality course with cadets from all over the UK. Some flying in from Scotland and NI.
It was a hard learning curve for me however, having to move over to ‘Army style’ comms. Which in the end seemed way more sensible.
3 Likes
Which are fine unless your Section IC is the other side of a mildly sturdy bush!
There are stocks available in some parts of RAFAC.
I will just chime in that I am one of the success stories of this area. Went on the Gold Cyber course and got really interetsed in it. Now I’m studying Cyber Security at university and helping out on Squadron with cyber and in talks to help at Wing level as well.
So while it shouldn’t be our main way of getting the relevant SME in it isn’t an outragous idea to think we can get a few in.
WestlandScout’s idea of getting ex-cadets and service members in is a good one. I am personally friends with an Ex-Army Cadet who is on my course and I know there are quite a few others in my course in other years and that’s just Cyber Security not Computer Science field as a whole.
If RAFAC want to become ‘The Cyber Cadet Force’ they need to advetise it and will find plenty of people who are willing to help out and get that skill out there.
3 Likes
From my experience, a lot of the CFAV interested and knowledgable in cyber are young, studying an adjacent field, or recently ex-cadets. I don’t think there is necessarily a lack of interested CFAV (though it’s likely true in some places), but I haven’t seen much SME structure put in place for cyber in the wings I’ve been to.
Looking at the proposed new cyber syllabus I’m quite pleasently suprised. I just hope staff are properly given training or have their civvy experience recognised for some portions, for example programming could be really uninformative without properly experienced instruction. On the flipside, as someone studying computer science and doing cybersecurity as a hobby, I wouldn’t want to have to sit through all the train the trainer stuff that I already know quite well.
Very exciting to see though!
I’m pleased about the responses above from those who are working in cyber!
Honestly my only concerns:
- Cyber portion seems pretty online, would be good to have plans or ideas for things to do in person. I’m sure those in the field of cyber, networking, or IT in general will have some kit laying around for the cadets to get stuck in messing around with.
- No mention of how staff become qualified to instruct, hopefully sensibly with recognition of civvy experience (the organisation track record suggests this might not be the case).
Having thought about it a bit, I’m unsure about the programming element at Silver.
I’m open to being persuaded but I don’t see that beginners would pick up enough learning Python in 2 days to be useful (at the point they’d be doing Silver - 15 and up). And for non beginners, say those doing computer science, will it add much value?
I’d lean towards making it one of a few optional courses.
I think scripting (bash, for example) would be an interesting as that is a lot less common for beginners than Python is yet is very applicable to cyber (though so is Python, a lot of tooling is made with Python).
Programming is a good skill and something you could make reasonable progress with in a weekend. Could always have various levels of challenge or allow cadets to use different languages if they already know Python.
True. Ages ago there was talk about having a cryptography module, which would be nice (I guess they couldn’t find anyone to write it).
1 Like