Because I’ve heard soooooo many cadets say “YAY Maths”.
“Oh and can we have more powerpoint STEM. It’s so great”
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These letters make very interesting reading. For example from the NAO letter the following:
"…The aim was to clear gliders for service, but this proved more complex than expected and in early 2018, the company recovering the Vigilant gliders decided that it could no longer proceed."
Given the restricted glider repair capacity and the difficulty of GRP repair referred to in Stephen Lovegrove’s letter and, as I understand it, Southern Sailplanes being the company referred to above (but I stand to be corrected ), how is it they are now in partnership with Aerobility to deliver the very aircraft they were unable to recover before? Either they have suddenly upskilled their workforce or the budget under the Aerobility recovery scheme is considerably more than the MOD were willing to invest. If it wasn’t Southern Sailplanes and they have always had the skills and capacity, why weren’t they originally selected to repair the Vigilants?
I suspect the following from Stephen Lovegrove’s letter indicates that a shortage of funds was the issue:
" The department has had to make some tough decisions as a realism measure "
Given a shortage of funds (my interpretation) the following course of action was taken:
" Subsequently, consideration was given to five options for the Vigilant fleet - sale to the open market; government to government sale; sale to charities; sale to the original manufacturers; or scrap. MoD decided to consider the charity option and a working group was established to consider this further. Defence Equipment and Support (within MoD), was then approached by two organisations, one of which was Aerobility. "
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the options were considered and seen who was represented in the working group. Whatever their deliberations, I wonder if formal minutes were taken? More importantly how were the charities invited to bid, if it was via a public invitation I must have missed it !!!
As I have stated before on this forum I have the greatest respect for Aerobility and similar organisations, the work they do is outstanding and I hope they make Project Able a great success. However, while our own organisation and its parent service operate under the principles of RISE, the complex saga that surrounds the re-organisation of Air Cadet gliding might appear to indicate that they have fallen far too short in more than one area.
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Also, what on earth is this “Aaron Aerospace Academy” that was due to open in 2019?
In addition to imporoved aerospace-focused annual camps and changes to the cadet syllabus in space and cyber to bring exciting opportunities to undertake practical training, the RAF is partnering with the Aviation Skills Partnership to support the development of state-of-the-art Aerospace Academies. The first of these, the Aaron Aerospace Academy, is due to break ground at RAF Syerston lkater this year.
From what I can tell this was supposed to have been open in 2019 and has presumeably suffered the normal delays. I’m not clear how the cadets benefit from this though, other than 2FTS getting shiny new offices . . .
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And the former 2fts gets a role aswell…
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Blimey, if I was some tin-foil-hatted conspiraloon, I might get the impression that this whole affair was some inept, corrupt, covered up, massively embarrassing pile of poo…
Fortunately, the ACO has been blessed with the leadership and care of one of the great moral and intellectual titans of our age, so we can safely put that idea to bed straight away.
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It’s been chinned off, came to nothing some of the funds moved to cosford.
HQ 2FTS already have new offices 800k worth
And it seems the Aviation Skills Partnership is rebranding?
this hits the nail on the head of what i was thinking as i read it
Problem - too complex (resource and funds) to get the fleet airworthy again for the Cadets
Solution: spend the money and resource to get the fleet airworthy again for a charity…
As i read it the Charity put forward a business plan that would work for the MOD to justify spending the money. And if the charity helped fund it, ironic that the Charity found the funds while the MOD couldn’t…
#sadtimes
I see someone has put a FOI in for the aviation academy… it will be interesting to see what comes back
i’d be interested to know
1 - what cost was considered too high to return the fleet to the Cadets
2 - what the cost is to make airworthy and donate to the charity
but on second thoughts i am not sure i would like to know the answer!
I thought I’d read that the charity was paying to make them airworthy, rather than MoD doing it?
They would then sell off the majority to other civil users to pay for it.
maybe so - which raises the question how come the charity could afford it but not the MOD?
well is there really a point in the MoD maintaining a fleet of ~half dozen aircraft for the air cadets?
Charities will attract and be able to attract financial backing for something like this, given the donations would be tax write offs and looks good on a website/news article.
I’m not sure a publicly funded body like the MoD could attract charitable donations like that and I’m not convinced the ATC is a big enough draw for an ongoing sponsorship. The latter can be very flimsy given the sponsors need to be actively managed and given concessions etc or they can pull out.
Wrong question. MoD was able to, could easily afford it. They simply didn’t want to.
As I understand it the financing model is as Old Newbie has indicated:
However, the initial funding seems to have come from a grant from the Dept for Transport (DfT) (i.e.from HM Govt’s pot of money). The question is, therefore, why no-one explored the possibility of setting up a special purpose vehicle (SPV)(organisation) to sit within the non-publicly funded element of the RAFAC. Such a SPV, funded from a DfT grant to meet its charitable aims, could act as the owner of the refurbished aircraft, register them within the civil aviation sector and operate under the RAF rule set (as other aircraft used by the RAF are). As a charitable trading company such an organisation could have delivered through the same financing model as Aerobility. People might think such an option may have worried some within the CoC that there would be a loss of control, but as other aircraft are operated by the RAF within the same framework I don’t see that there would have been a problem; I suspect that the former Comdt 2FTS may not have shared my views.
Remember too that the gliders operated by the Canadian Air Cadets are owned and maintained by the Air Cadet League of Canada and it doesn’t seem to cause the RCAF too many problems.
All that being said(and I feel a lot better for venting) it is now history and I wish Aerobility all success in their very worthwhile venture.
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Would have had to bring all the VGS instructors back to being VRT to operate civilian aircraft under the RAF rules like those others are
They got a DfT grant!!!
@tingger Why would you need VR(T) pilots?
I think you would have to have a leadership element with a real passion for gliding to consider doing what you have suggested, and neither JM or DM strike me as ticking those boxes!
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