It would be nice to sense that there is a better plan for the future, but by what he’s said there’s not really a sign of it, by suggesting the same old, same old, as you can see this just being the norm for HQAC because it’s easy. When you are highly paid just doing the easy thing isn’t enough. Our MPs earn less and we demand a whole lot more.
The fact it would come down to us to make things happen is par for the course.
I get that it’s unrealistic for loads of new stuff this year, but we need something to sell this organisation to new groups of kids and make it sound like it’s worth the effort. What we’ve been doing IMO isn’t good enough. We need to have flying as a permanent deliverable fixture and if the RAF can’t deliver or provide, chin them off and get into the non-military aviation sector. There is no room for sentimentality, in any other part of our lives if a business wasn’t supplying / delivering and or there products became sub-standard we would just stop using it. It’s not our call but I think it’s time to lose our reliance on the RAF for flying and look elsewhere and use the RAF on the basis of what it can deliver/supply. How much longer can we honestly keep on calling ourselves “Air Cadets” or anything that intimates flying is a significant part of what we do? Ask anyone what they think of when you say Royal Air Force and it will be aircraft / flying related. I bet if you said to people you are in the Air Cadets and the cadets don’t go flying, they’d at best look at you quizzically.
I have, as the ACLO on a secret Wiltshire Airbase - having returned from a sortie I told the Co-Pilot and Nav that we would debrief in the Officers’ Mess bar (and I would buy the beers). A VR(T) Sqn Ldr (who obviously had not read Mess Rules) attempted to order us to leave the bar because we were ‘improperly dressed’ (flying suits).
He got rather short shrift from me when I pointed out that, despite his rank tabs, he was merely the equivalent of a Regular Fg Off and that he was talking to a Regular Flt Lt with several years Seniority, as well as the Stn ACLO (he should have known) and an aircaft captain. He was told told (in no uncertain terms) to select fully fine pitch and foxtrot oscar. He demanded to know which Sqn I was from (like it wasn’t obvious from the Sqn badges on the flying suit!) and who my Boss was.
Silly sod rang my Boss the following morning and got severely burned.
Oh how we laughed.
Things have got a lot better since VR(T) / RAFAC Officers have been required to attend OASC and ATF but, sadly, I have routinely seen idocracy in action in some Officers’ dealings with Regular personnel.
I’ve never had any problems getting Cdts flying on C17 or Albert CPT/MCT sorties. Not tried with A400, but they seem to be majorly unserviceable.
ISTAR, I can see that would be a problem owing to the nature of the tasking(s), albeit I would imagine that SCT sorties would be available.
I fully expect that Maritime sorties will be available as the P8 Fleet stands up.
FJ? Not a chance save for possibly annual camps at Valley (and that was always the case).
What about the Phenoms on 45® (when they are serviceable)? Certainly we routinely flew Cdts on the Jetstream (Oops I’m showing my age now!).
The organisation needs the top to come up with the way forward which gives us as I say something to sell the Air Cadets when talking to teenagers and their parents. I’m not talking about later this year I’m talking next year and into the future. The one thing we don’t need is visons and missions as they are meaningless words, for senior management to make it look like they’ve earned their money.
Being the Air Cadets and just talking about AT, flying theory and flight sims, isn’t good enough. Flying is sexy and as they say sex sells. I remember the time you could show current pictures of cadets in flying garb, saying that we charge £x/month and the flying doesn’t cost anything extra and you could fly solo (caveats explained) before having a full driving licence, was a game changer in capturing the imagination of many that joined. How many got to fly solo is irrelevant, the opportunity was real. Parents were happy as their kids were happy. I’ve lost count of the time parents would speak to me after a first flying or gliding detail for their child and be nothing less than gushing, as their son/daughter hadn’t spoken of anything else. One mum checked that her son had done aerobatics, as she though he’d made it up. These cadets would speak to their mates, so we were effectively self recruiting. We have nothing like this now.
If as a teenager you want to do AT, easier and less demanding time wise to join the Scouts. The Scouts are set up for this (in our area at least) with activity centres and activity leaders. Local Scout leaders say it makes their lives relatively easy.
I don’t disagree with this, and some of what you mention was covered in the interview.
CAC used the phrase “not making change for change’s sake” or something like that.
It’s been mentioned about his talk of “modernising” and he elaborated about keeping up with the Astra programme changes, how F35 came online while technician training was still stuck in the 80s, and a variety of other things that suggests he will be looking at how and what we deliver into the future.
I was especially interested to hear about his large scale youth projects that he launched/worked on during his various RAF roles. Something about that suggests that he is very much keen to get high quality, high impact changes enacted (and probably already has ideas, but there’s no point talking about them right now).
Have you watched the interview?
Personally I feel like we need to focus on our unit priorities at this stage and not try to read too much into anything else. As a Sqn, a “quieter” anniversary is going to be appreciated. We can all think bigger later.
Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, occasionally you do have a point I agree with.
With MFTS running training I don’t think that’s likely / possible any more, I don’t think cadet opportunity flights are written into the Ascent contract, so that rules out the entire training fleet.
That’s a shame. In my day we reguarly flew Cdts on 55(R) Dominies and 45(R) Jetstreams.
In the good old days we had 35 Nimrods (my first Operational Tour), 60 odd C-130K (second and third Operational Tours), 18 Dominies, and 12 Jetstreams (Instructional Tours). I routinely and regularly flew Cdts on all 4 types.
Sadly the RAF has shrunk so much since I joined up, to the point where RAFAC is what, twice the size of the Parent Service? Hence the lack of flying opportunities. 
Swing that light. 
Yep, flew cadets on Vulcans, Victors & C130s.
i was one of those Cadets! i might not have been one of yours but on a Summer Camp to RAFC Cranwell I had two hours flying with 55 Sqn
the only flying opportunity i hear nowadays for flying that is in something more than a Tutor/VGS is the lucky few chosen for either the Queen’s birthday flight or RIAT
[/off topic]
i get what @Teflon is saying, we need the “air” in air cadets to return but this has been a valid point for the last 10 years, particularly with a pause on gliding…
not quite a case of change the record as it remains a valid point, but i do feel we need to learn to walk again before we run (in the hope that the new CAC is working on increasing flying opportunities in the background for when we are at running speed again)
Ditto loved my 2hr flight with a landing at Brize which i was stood up for and told to just hold on 
5hrs30 in a Nimrod remains my cadet flying highlight. I even had the wheel for 30 of those minutes.
But those days are gone, no point pretending that those opportunities are available any more.
Kinloss Camp? My flight got extended by several hours as we were sent on a Russian submarine hunt.
Yeah, we went trawler bouncing in the Irish Sea.
Not quite hunt for red October for us, more gander for Irish herring.
Having watched the interview I have to say I was impressed and am quite hopeful.
Taking into account the intended audience I found his responses well thought out and pragmatic given the situation he finds himself in.
Sounds like you flew on a ‘Tapestry’ sortie
Sadly the rot started with the 1994 ‘Front Line First’ slash and burn Defence Review which shut the AEFs and forced them to merge with the UASs, compounded by the aditional canning of several UASs.
Fast forward to the (ongoing) gliding debacle from 2014 on, with the canning of the Vigilants (still that’s what you get when you put a ‘Scribbly’ in charge of Ops).
Pretty standard to do 6+ hrs more as an AEOp on 42 Sqn in the late 1970’s (also with some cadets, when summer camps were on). Longest Fishop I was on = 9:20!! 
Tapestries had gone by the time I joined 42(TB)Sqn - we would do OTs to the SKAW to get the Dry Team up to speed on Radar and ESM.
My longest sortie was some 20 hrs with AAR (we had an extra AAR qualified pilot on board for that). That was hard work!
Guys…take it to PM please
It is interesting though 
Even if it is off topic…