Ta - hasnât crawled down the wires to me yet.
Is the sgt sat down in a flying suit an SI or a cdt? This is why we need cadet rank slides, like every other CF.
Given situational context, Iâd guess cadet. But youâre right, itâs not obvious, and can be quite confusing at times.
It is a cadet
I would really like to know why both these courses have been paused after HQAC explicitly stated they wouldnât pause them.
Hopefully you get my point? (There are no identifiers on a flying suit.)
Not in the photo, but in person you would see a âflight staff cadetâ tag on their flying suit
Maybe the problem is no or limited VA equals no staff.
Knowing some staff on both courses, many staff have run out of VA by the time they come to the course.
Take JL for example, if we assume circa 10 staff are SAAI:
If they are running IWT and ranges throughout the year, and then taking part in camps and sqn activities (As we have to remember only about 6 staff are permanent JL Staff, the rest do it as a supernumerary), we can quickly see that they donât have enough VA.
Also with JL, with staff being SIs, they donât claim VA in the same way.
With QAIC, I would assume its different as there is less CPD required throughout.
Iâm guessing youâre new to RAFAC.
And if he was a student on a course rather than a flight staff cadet, how would someone know?
When the other pauses came out both QAIC & JL courses were in progress & needed to be delivered.
It makes sense that they would then be paused once their respective courses had been completed & debriefed for further review when they would return.
Both require a lot of pre-planning ahead of each course & with the changes in the over18 cadets JL in particular would be particularly effected.
If it hadnt been paused it could have found that it didnât have any cadets eligible to apply which would have killed it properly.
Another good reason why wearing flying suits isnât helpful.
Wouldnât be an issue in No 2 or No 3.
I see it as reviewing whilst still in progress is similar trying to change the wheel of a car whilst its still moving. Its easier and simpler if you stop to changw the tyre then carry on
Having âcadetâ on the rank slide (like every other CF) would fix this for all states of dress.
The cadet identifier is on brassards, beret badges (for ATC) & on the front of the flying suit. The photo is an exception (noise) rather than something that is occurring as common problem (signals)
In the ARMY ranks are often embroidered with the regiment under the rank slide so itâs no extra cost to have one for cadets.
In the sea cadets, the only have two cadet ranks that use regular rank insignia so whilst an additional cost is not significant.
With the exception of the raf regiment, unit identifiers are not listed on rank slides. The RAFAC use the exact same insignia for all ranks as regular RAF.
As such if RAFAC remove all extra embroidery from rank slides it can save costs by utilising the pure raf contract rather than having to fund from their own budget.
This is a non-issue & if you did a risk probability assessment of a cadet in uniform being mistaken for a regular.
Liklyhood = 1 - very low
Impact = 2 - low (because it would be quickly resolved)
Bringing back to topic, the pauses of Jl & QAIC are because of the budgetary reviews, cost effectiveness & return on investment. If we can save money by not having extra embroidery on rank insignia that can be diverted to supporting activities such as JL & QAIc that can only be a good thing.
So just as a thought and move on the discussion from the fact âcourses pauseâ what would the future look like for QAIC & JL after their pause.
Assume no over 18s so the ages for JL would need to be lower.
For example, Could they have a combined dual-coloured blue & maroon lanyard?
Could you combine them into Junior Aerospace Leaders Course (JALC) ? How would that look?
So that would make them defacto Space Marine Cadets?
The problem with pausing these large, long and high resource courses is starting them back up again afterwards. Staff will have moved on, knowledge lost and it will never deliver what you want it to. That will then lead to less credence given to it, which means people will view it as poorer, which means it will be cancelled as not good value for money.