To the outside world that’s how it looks unfortunately. And we have enough time served around that a 2 tier system exists anyway.
We recently had a Wg Cdr > Flt Lt within the wing, they wanted to get back to supporting a Sqn and took an OC Sqn vacancy rather than the previous “higher” and perhaps less fun role.
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This brings to mind my old PSAO from my time in the TA. That job is ranked at captain and that’s the rank he wore with working dress; on Remembrance Sunday, however, his No. 2 SD (Army equivalent of our No. 1s) was that of a full colonel, also sporting a Commando badge and green beret that he never usually wore either.
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Not much, but where does the real value actually benefit the Cadet!? On a squadron delivering training, or making more admin and dreaming up some great ideas that those at Sqn level are expected to bow to!?
Some of these HQ roles are doing fantastic work that is massively benefiting staff and cadets. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff!
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I can either spend my time on a Sqn delivering training to one set of cadets or I can train and assess instructors to go out to multiple squadrons to deliver training to multiple sets of cadets.
Force multiplier?
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Exactly this. And without trained teams any SME quickly becomes a single point of failure.
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Shows a lack of understanding of what some of those at HQ do.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of chaff who sit around getting old and not moving on but with the low number of civil servants we have more and more work is being done by volunteers.
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I think that the structure of the corps is fundamentally flawed. There are too many layers of management and the Base unit of a squadron is too small. Unless you are a large unit with 10 plus staff with a broad range of skills then cadets will miss out on the core offer of Adv Trg/DofE Exped, Shooting, RPAS, Field craft, Road marching, First Aid, Leadership, sports?, Synthetic flying, radio, space, cyber, MOI. How many units can offer all of the above.
Going forward the corps seems to be wedded to the PTS. This is impossible for a single Sqn to deliver above blue with much of the blue needing specialist skills that take tine to develop. With the staff shortage/attrition rate experienced staff are getting less and less common.
The ACF model of companies geographically based looks much more attractive. Local units will have 3/4 staff to run parade nights and cover staff absence. They will manage the cadets and complete mandatory training and classification. The rest will be delivered by delivery teams who are qualified in their field and organise company/sector events.
Going forward the corps will need
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I think the way they have laid out the volunteer posts in ACP 19 is pretty shoddy to be honest. There are many posts in HQ RAFAC that aren’t actually really HQ RAFAC, in a literal sense.
It’d be much easier to have them separated and laid out as core HQ RAFAC roles (e.g. senior volunteer advisor, WO RAFAC), VSDT etc, then showing as individual teams for our key activities. It generally makes sense to have a few CFAV nationally responsible for each activity, as unfortunately we just do not have the CS to look after that for us. Most of the training we deliver on squadrons was designed and made by fellow CFAV.
Also important to remember that just because a role can be primary, it doesn’t mean it has to be. Many wing SMEs carry out squadron duties or other roles too.
It’s also a bit weird that we are “Air, Space and Cyber” yet there’s no Space or Cyber officers established below national level officially. I guess Cyber is often bundled into Radio, and Space into “Aviation”, but the current establishments just don’t seem suited to the astra tagline we seem to throw around so much.
However, there are very few of the nearly 300 volunteer posts on there. There are some, just not many.
Not only that but space and cyber are entirely unfunded (as is radio).
A case could be made that space doesn’t need funding as it’a no different to running any other PTS course but to deliver cyber needs both internet access and devices - at least one per 2 or 3 cadets for the current course.
So either this is covered from Sqn funds - paid for by the subs of which ever unit hosts the course - or staff and cadets bring their own devices and use their own data.
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