No they are not. For a military Service, you want people starting off in the best possible health.
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I spoke to someone in recruitment Sunday just gone who said the total opposite was the case for a lot of ground trades - âLosing people faster than we can replace & only getting worseâ 
Second this. Takes over 16m for an engineer ti be fully qualified and on squadron. They then need about a month to be trained on that platform.
Notice period is 6m for heavies and 12m for fairies.
I think you missed my point slightly.
If a serving RAF member can go to the doctor and say âdoc, I think I have X, Y, Zâ, in this case asthma and the doctor says âoh thatâs fine just take these pillsâ then itâs fine.
That person has been deemed fit to perform their role or theyâd have been kicked out. But, the exact same medical scenario which the RAF has just signed off as fit woild be a barrier to joining as it ticks a box.
Glasses is the worst example. Hundreds of RAF pilots kicking about who wear glasses, and clearly without any impact on their role. Yet the standards to join would mean most if not all would have been turned away for those exact eyesight issues. Theyâre getting slightly better at that granted, but itâs still out of touch with reality.
Having medical standards isnât the issue. Having wildly different standards for joining vs serving is.
Not really.
With my medical history, there is absolutely no way I can join off the street. Or go for a LE commission.
But I can continue to serve.
The RAF has invested a decent amount in me. I can still do my job, have gone to a medical board to prove that. If they binned me off now, itâs several hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment gone. (BRTC, Phase 2, Phase 3, Chinook Q course, ATSC, JMLC, Navy Embarkation, GOLDesp, Mental Health First Aid, FAAW and more)
If I was to apply off the street theyâd look at me and go:
Mental health issues?
Pelvic ORIF?
Spinal Fusion?
Slipped disc?
And yes, even resolved childhood asthma.
They would absolutely tell me to jog on. It isnât worth the risk of investing that money in me to find out after training I canât carry out my primary role.
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Itâs rarely as cut and dry as that, and many situations of in service diagnoses result in that person leaving.
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exactly this.
@Rexan taking nothing away from @Horriblelittletechie, adopting your example of pilots with glasses it is even more valid that the investment versus someone wearing glasses = binned doesnât make any sense.
given everyoneâs health deteriorates as they age, it would be foolish to apply the same standards for those joining in their twenties to those in their 40s and they donât, consider the timed run for 2.5km and the expected time to complete gets longer for the older age brackets.
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Not for much longer for fitness, standards are going towards age and gender neutral. Take your point on the rest though
Wigston suggested they could, not that they necessarily would.
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Wigston, soon to be yesterdayâs man.
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But if itâs safe for you to do your job now, then itâs safe for you to do your job, which means those medical conditions do not impact your ability to do the job. So why would they stop you being able to apply to do the job?
There might be general usability arguments. Are you less useful to the RAF as a whole because of the conditions? Arguably, then you could consider it as a blocker because you provide less potential value.
But someone wearing glasses, for example, has absolutely no less value to the RAF than someone who doesnât. And if you can stick some glasses on the day after you start IOT, then why was it an issue six months earlier?
Arguably a good thing.
Do you need to be physically fit to sit in an ATC tower controlling aircraft? No, clearly. Medically âfitâ in terms in incapacitation risk etc? Yes, outside the RAF bubble an ATCO needs a class 3 medical. But a requirement to be good at doing press-ups?âŚ
Do you need to be physically fit to pull 9G in a typhoon? Probably.
As the defence space turns more and more to cyber esque roles and more âgeekyâ, the fitness requirements just seem more and more out of touch. Might you put off some of the computer science grads due to needing to do a fitness test designed 40 years ago for a solider? If yes, then is that unnecessarily cutting down your talent pool for arbitrary reasons?
Itâs an interesting debate and a lot of it I think will be a case of it always being that way so canât be changed. Beards, hair cuts, gender neutral uniform etc. Got to roll with change or risk being left behind.
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It does. Iâm MLD and require more input before I deploy, if they allow me to deploy at all. Whilst I have deployed, I am, on paper not as effective as others.
Unfortunately, yes you do. Even prescription painkillers means you are not allowed to control, spanner or fly.
A controller i am friends with says he has seen many people turn up with illness as they canât control if they report to the med centre.
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We get that at work all the time due to contradictory âdonât come to work sick we care about your well-beingâ and âwe will stick you on and try to sack you for having a poor sickness recordâ policies.
Yeah. Bit rubbish.
Whilst yes, standards are lower once youâve served a bit there are still huge ramifications to careers.
Despite still being able to serve I canât:
- Commission
- Be an Aircraft Ground Engineer (flying tech)
- Deploy to certain locations
- Crucially, I am not entitled to being able to have my contract extended. After being promoted, I should have been offered an extension to 22 years, however that was declined. I have been given a rolling 5 year extension. So will have to try my luck again in a few years.
Itâs not a simple cut and dry.
Of course you need to be physically fit. Would I have wanted a PAR controller to suddenly have an asthma attack whilst talking down my aircraft on a cr@ppy visibility / cloud base day. Of course not. Or, coping with a talkdown whilst wearing an NBC mask.
And by the way, itâs âphysically fitâ (worse case) to go to war. Thatâs why there is a medical standard. End of discussion about fluffy / flexible aspects.
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it is exactly this
and ATC bod in the tower, a RN Chef in the galley, and Army signaller - all of them when the brown stuff hits the spinny thing are soldiers and have signed up to pick up a weapon and âfight in the trenchesâ and to be effective at that a minimum level of fitness is required.
@Horriblelittletechie is an ideal example of where there are exceptions to that rule where certain tasks will not be ask of âsickâ personnel but would otherwise still be expected to fight on the âfront lineâ.
as an aside, and at the risk of going on a tangent, certain medical conditions are permitted if the control measure is deemed acceptable (examples mild asthma, requiring glasses)
diabetes is a condition which is not deemed acceptable as without the control measure the individual becomes a serious risk.
A friend of mine (and fellow cadet back in the day) joined up, got through basic training and then trade training. he was a certainty he was going to join up and no surprise he did well once he got inâŚright up until he fell ill, after some tests by the Drs it was diabetes and was quickly discharged.
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Yes you do, in particular if you are Tac ATC or even have to defend your position until you âbug outâ and have to run for it.
I had a medical to join the RAF whilst on the day, I was adjudged to have adequate vision I would not pass for aircrew as at that point my vision would deteriorate with age to debar me from aircrew.
In the medical field you are unable to perform invasive procedures if you have Hep B or HIV, and that is down to even taking blood or inserting a cannula, so that rules virtually all roles.
Seems USAF is similarly hit (article from last year, couldnât find anything for 2023) - but what a statistic for those not medically fit:
Then factor in that roughly 75% of young Americans donât qualify to begin with because of a growing obesity problem and other health and medical issues, and the squeeze is on, he added.
âThat is staggering,â Thomas said. âThat is a very troubling statistic, not just for us but for America.â
Sadly, they tend to lead on some health issues, we follow a few years behind, having that many 10-11 yr olds listed is scary:
Overweight and obesity prevalence (including severe obesity) was higher in year 6 (34.3%) compared to reception (22.6%).
Not health-related (but with 75% disbarred for health reasons), the USAF has taken other measures to increase their recruiting pool!!
Was trying to compare asthma statistics between UK & USA, but very difficult to do. Not that easy to find accurate figures for just UK either.
12% of the population seems to be the most often quoted statistic for occurance of Asthma in the UK pop and trending upwards. Canât discern for age, but it is a healthy slice of the people on these Islands. Some 8 million people.