New Air Force Ranks

[themajor]

@romeo_bravo

Not going to effect RAFAC as our ranks/class are gender specific

Do you mean not?

[romeo_bravo]

@themajor

Do you mean not?

Dooh, correct

[Mike_Bravo]

[GrandMaster_Flush]

It’s been press released.

They haven’t picked it up because they simply don’t care and, realistically, don’t understand.

Talk to any random on the street, who can tell you the current RAF rank structure? It simply isn’t something that registers with the public, so why waste bandwidth on it?

[GrandMaster_Flush]

I wrote this in a different thread when it was discussed there, but it’s still relevant as some people still don’t get it;

@OldNewbie

The RAF is now 15% female, giving them job titles that wipe out their existence is dated and, frankly, stupid. Giving the RAF job titles that acknowledges everyone is a very quick and easy fix that says “we don’t think you’re all men”. That might not matter or resonate all that much with the, predominantly, middle aged men on this site, but it matters to those it affects - the 20-something year old techies, male, female and other, who currently serve and do care.

Ok, you can say the new titles themselves aren’t that great, fine, but what they represent is important. It’s recognition that the RAF is learning, is listening to its people and is trying to do the right thing.

I was fortunate. The trade I looked after were known as analysts, easy. But I had friends who were EngOs. Some of them were females. It was a constant, low level bugbear and annoyance of both them and their female colleagues / tradees that they were all called men in their job titles. Why not fix that?

[AMW]

@GrandMaster_Flush

They haven’t picked it up because they simply don’t care and, realistically, don’t understand.

I very much doubt that, believe me they will care. They shouldn’t - but they do. There were dozens of articles over the switch to aviator over airmen (Articles from GB News, Express, Sun, RT, Times, Star, Breitbart, Mirror, Unilad all easy to find), yet seemingly none on an even more fundamental change of rank title.
The right-leaning media outlets in our country are currently obsessed over what they perceive to be “wokery” and the “gender agenda”, particularly in relation to our Armed Forces. Indeed there have been at least 3 articles easily findable just this week (LBC, Sun, Telegraph) on the Army only considering potential changes to the title of Guardsman, so I struggle to believe not a single outlet (presuming they are indeed aware/have noticed) would not pick this story up.
Notwithstanding the mainstream media, surely Forces News at the absolute least would pick up on this? Reporting on news/changes relating to the Armed Forces community is sort of their job, after all…

@GrandMaster_Flush

I wrote this in a different thread when it was discussed there, but it’s still relevant as some people still don’t get it;

For clarity, I completely agree with the switch to gender neutral, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m just a little disappointed in the titles they did come up with in the end and quite confused by the lack of any publicly accessible information on the switch as it feels very much like a “swept under the carpet” change, rather than one the RAF should be proud of. Indeed the lack of any form of public news story or official social media post or literally anything on this topic made me jump to the conclusion that this proposal must be unofficial and nonsense (much like some of the Astra concept uniforms on Reddit) rather than a genuine policy change.

Anyway, I think I’ve said my piece

[Fraz]

Wait am I being stupid, why would being an engineering officer give you gender specific designations? I thought you would just have your officer rank in that position?

However as to the main point, the experience most women I know who served in the RAF seem to describe is simply being called “senior aircraftwomen” or whatever appropriate variation was due, not sure why that’s so much of an issue…