Ive been given a temporary rank whilst corporals go on study leave. Does any other unit do this? (we are a pretty small unit)
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Acting higher rank (AHR) has been a very established precedent for decades (possibly longer in the other services).
I would do this more often as I think it’s a good idea to actually give someone the rank while they step up for a pre-defined period of time.
Also a great way to put people in the spotlight and assess their progress over a period of time
My question to you, because I’m very interested, is how long will you have it and how will you feel about giving it back?
Also, how will you feel if you’re not promoted the next time your unit promotes people?
Previous advice I’ve been given was to not do this so as to not create conflict or set expectations, but I’m certainly interested in acting higher rank for something like a fixed term of a month during which time those cadets carry out specific duties for me.
Keen to learn from your experience.
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Thanks for the response. I would definitely feel sad about giving it back but I consider it more as a favour to my friend (who I am covering) than an actual promotion. On the other hand it probably does raise my chance of being promoted in the future. I think that in my case if I was not promoted in the next intake, I would be understanding because our unit is very small and that means we can’t have many NCOs. I don’t have much experience of units over 40 cadets so I am not sure how I would feel then.
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Does your unit do this with other ranks or just cpls? E.g. a sgt acting as FS or cpl as sgt
Typically, whenever an established post becomes temporarily gapped you would look to fill it using someone with AHR.
*vacant
I used to work with establishments when I was a wing XO at Brize.
Gapped is when you deliberately gap a post and use the money elsewhere.
When talking about a gap, people almost exclusively mean vacant / not filled.
Also, it was my least favourite job of all the jobs I’ve done in the service. 
Second perhaps only to my time in Hermitage…
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I haven’t heard of any RAFAC units who do this with cadet ranks however
Rank is a military concept and so my intent was to provide context for how acting rank works. Why should a unit have to cope without one of its cpls when there are other cdts who can step up temporarily?
I haven’t heard of this being a thing anywhere near any ATC unit which I’ve been on.
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I suppose many units don’t have posts that really mean anything.
It’s tough assigning cadets to actual posts when attendance can fluctuate. You need more of a list of jobs / responsibilities that they do as a team.
That’s why my approach is to promote everyone to the rank they’re capable of performing at. It ensures coverage at exam times too when attendance drops. If you only have a couple of SNCOs, you basically spend a lot of time without SNCOs.
Still keen to see how I can make acting rank work though, identifying a few key jobs that those people are responsible for say, for a month.
Almost a bit like a duty NCO type of situation.
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