How many chiefs do we need?

Adult Staff The Staff Mess
21

The one that leaps out as useless ballast has to be the Sector Commanders. Mag to grid…

Wg Staff Officers have a role. Never met one who understood or fulfilled it in any useful way. Just a holding pen for burnouts, pissed off ex Sqn Commanders and the Wg Cos mates.

A lot of these posts are rank inflated, but some do need that rank, maybe higher to get things done. But you are emulating your parent service. Rank inflation is rife. Wg Cos command squadrons,instead of Sqn Ldrs, Gp Capt command wings these days

22

I disagree with that view of Sector Commanders, I would say that they are more use than the generic WSO’s that they have replaced as tent are in the chain of command. I would question why we have the generic WSO posts which are surely redundant?

23

We have a number of very good WSOs that the wing would sorely miss. The sector commanders, on the other hand…

24

But what do the WSO’s do? Is it one of the other jobs on the list?

25

If sector commanders are useless, I’d suggest that’s the personnel in the job rather than the concept itself.

26

Our Wing First Aid Officer runs at least 1 AFA course a month, the Wing Shooting Officer runs an L98A2 training weekend once a quarter, the Wing AT Officer runs a BEL course once a year and organises lots of other AT opportunities. I could go on… Is this not normal? I always thought that the Wing Staff Officers, being volunteers, were generally a decent bunch?

27

If you look at the list at the top of the page all of these are roles which are accounted for. It’s the funding for x4 WSO (Generic) that I’m suggesting are a waste of resources.

28

Ah, understood. That’s what I get for not reading a thread right from the top.

29

I still can’t see the need for HQAC or RHQ. HQAC getting money/resources out of the MOD is a laugh, the lack of anything special for the 75th illustrates this perfectly.
The military like all public sector organisations seems to thrive having people in jobs for the sake of it, but with so much now being done and submitted electronically do you need them?
Throughout my working life the number of people in jobs has dropped by huge amounts, typing pools, every manager having a secretary, 8/9 each in finance and personnel depts have been reduced to one or at most thee and things like catering, cleaning and engineering using contractors, where you once had managers and supervisors covering each of these, there is now one manager/coordinator.
The ATC is like work used to be, bits of paper flying around with no real need other than to have bits of paper flying around.