I mean yeah. I can’t argue with that 
2 Likes
The only reason I can think of why this was announced on LinkedIn and not MOD media channels, would be if the poster was incredibly angry at the organisation.
That anger might stem, for example, from being told, “There’s no way you’re getting an extension!”
2 Likes
I genuinely don’t think he’d have wanted one.
1 Like
To be fair, id never want the job its a poison chalice, damned if you do, damned if you dont
6 Likes
100% on him. Either there was a plan and he’s undermined it, which suggests he doesn’t care about the effect, or there was no plan and he’s gone rogue… Which suggests he doesn’t have control and doesn’t care about the effect.
5 Likes
You have to go back 20 years/11 CACs to find the next who was in podt for four years (John Kennedy)
This one seemed fitting.
8 Likes
Well, his leaving statement wasn’t exactly inspiring Churchillian (He/Him) rhetoric, was it?
I thought it had been written by AI, until I saw the incorrect date for his taking over the job of Comdt RAFAC: it’s us meat puppets who make mistakes like that, not something with any intelligence. Plus, in order to make a proper game of Buzzword Bingo, one shouldn’t put in every buzzword in the book (stakeholders, leverage, diversity etc etc), otherwise it’s too easy.
So who’s next? Are Air Cadets eligible for the role, provided they have their Blue Leadership badge? 
2 Likes
That man could not inspire me to get out of a burning car.
5 Likes
You mean ‘exploring the optionality of egressing a combustible automotive experience (It/It)’ 
4 Likes
Nor leave a sinkng ship 
2 Likes
It’s on his linkd in profile
The btec that none of the SNCOs on my sqn have, including myself even though we’ve been MAC for 2+ years, and some may be leaving soon due to age. Three of us got MAC just before or just after the old aviation one was stopped, and we have seen diddly squat since then, apart from one cfav saying we may need to show workbooks for evidence of learning or something similar.
Seeing as the btec was one of the main selling points for the classification syllabus, and many cadets see it as more school/lessons after school, is there any selling point, or dare I say it incentive for completion up to MAC, apart from wing/sqn courses or positions saying Cdt bloggs needs to be senior classification etc.
5 Likes
Believe me that, as CFAVs, we absolutely share your frustration. Many of us have also been cadets ourselves too and either gained the BTEC (although it came in after my time) or seen the benefits of it for cadets.
Sadly, we’ve been promised many things regarding the new BTEC system, but are yet to really see any tangible progress. Some dates have been mooted.
Frankly, I feel you’re right to be angry about it and a well-worded complaint to HQAC wouldn’t be out of order.
6 Likes
The RAFAC’s problem is similar to the United Kingdom’s: it promises far more than it is humanly possible to deliver with the financial, human and physical resources that are available. The economics just don’t stack up.
One has to remember that the RAF is a third of the size it was forty years ago - they really are ‘The Few’ - so how can they provide facilities such as RAF bases, military firearms and ranges, uniforms and aircraft with full servicing and refuelling facilities to a shadow aeronautical organisation which is bigger than they are? These are all things that only the RAF can provide for us.
We can add that a part-time volunteer-run Corps has the administrative requirements of a full-time Service: every ATC Sqn could employ a full-time Civil Servant in the office to get that work done.
Hence we have a situation where we have many requirements which can’t all be fulfilled to a first-rate standard.
3 Likes
Gliding could easily be outsourced to the BGA 
Cries in ACTO 35
7 Likes
Outsourcing flying and gliding is probably the way ahead for us.
Also: bin shooting full-bore rifles. Small bore and air rifle shooting on NSRA targets is as challenging as military shooting, and can be organised locally at squadron level.
Fieldcraft training is pointless and should be instantly removed from the programme: the training doesn’t go anywhere that’s relevant to an aeronautical organisation.
The obsolete and impractical No1 and No2 uniforms can therefore be replaced by an issue of blue-grey PCS: this would also replace the MTP PCS, so the public can see that we are Air Cadets.
I think that the RAFAC needs a complete overhaul of its business model, as well as a rethink of our raison d’etre and usefulness to the nation in general. When I was younger, I used to volunteer in order to ‘give something back,’ but what are we all taking and giving for?
The Scouts are an organisation that promotes exchange of skills and knowledge in order to foster international brotherhood: we’ve still got one foot in the WWII and Cold War mentality that we train young people for life in the RAF, and we’re not sure where the other foot is going.
This mentality manifests itself by our twin contradictory statements that we are ‘not a recruitment branch for the RAF,’ and that we help with ‘awareness raising’ of the fact that there is an air force. Not that our awareness raising prevents continual defence cuts, of course.
Commandants of the RAFAC have been selected from Cold War - era retired fossils who, having spent all their working lives in the Public Sector, with all the waste, inefficiency and moral cowardice inherent in any such organisation which doesn’t have a businesslike bone in its corporate body, so we can’t expect any radical change ever to happen under the status quo.
It’s not all their fault: the British forces only adopted Mission Command in the 1990s - fifty years after the introduction of Auftragstaktik in the WWII German forces. I served the Royal Engineers in the 1980s. We were told to be ‘an individual within the system,’ and to use ‘Sapper Initiative’ to get the job done: that usually meant stealing stuff from anywhere to do it, or as I called it ‘reallocation of resources.’
The RAF Regt of the '90s and noughties was pretty much a continuation of that ethos: indeed the RE pioneered military aviation. The RFC was one of several corps split off from them. So one can work within the British military system, but you can’t change it, or decide how to achieve the mission as a subordinate commander.
1 Like
It part of the aims of the organisation to “To provide training which will be useful in the Armed Forces”
that would only work if the public recognise that uniform as RAF to then recognise as “junior RAF” members to then see us as the RAF Air Cadets - otherwise we’ll be confused as some form of Air Scouts or similar
we’re not but we do “To provide training which will be useful in both the Armed Forces and civilian life” and therefore valid training for those who do choose to join up
er…have they?
The last three CACs all joined the RAF after 1979. The Cold war is suggested to have ended in 1991 once the Soviet Union collapsed. so they would be barely out of training by the time they were effective. offering 30+ years in the RAF outside of the Cold War era.
Babs was 52 when she took post as CAC
Dawn was 48 when she took post as CAC
Tony was 51 when he took post as CAC
hardly “fossils” at those ages are they?
3 Likes