Following on from a comment elsewhere on the forum, does your Wing use sectors?
If so, how do they operate and do you find them useful?
My Wing is scaled for 6 sectors, but we currently have 4 with 6-7 squadrons in each. They’re split geographically, although 2 in particular do cover very large areas due to the rural nature of the Wing.
Usually, training events such as MOI, first aid (above blue level) and similar PTS opportunities are organised on a sector basis, with cadets bidding for places and the event taking place at a specific squadron (usually the same one, right on one edge of the sector, unfortunately).
However I read elsewhere that a Wing had abolished its sectors as they weren’t found to be helpful, so I’m curious as to what this looks like across RAFAC.
It never worked but I dont think this was because of a lack of desire from the unit CFAV but more the choice of Sector Commander and lack of desire to pull the various OCs together (many being brand new).
If I had the choice, I would opt to bring sectors back but it really does need a quality sector commander who wants to see every unit succeed and is frequently engaging with the OCs in their sector rather than popping in to do the annual inspection.
Not really in my experience. I’ve moved about the Wing in the last 15 years or rather within the sector…except that has changed every 3-4 years losing one unit from one corner and gaining another.
I can’t say i have ever seen a benefit with one exception - when we had the best Sector commander he would organise twice a year a first class weekend camp. It was for those cadets with no more than 12 months service and threw them into some camping, trekking, a bit of a night exercise and possibly some climbing or assault/confidence course.
He requested one staff from each Squadron and he sorted out the rest. If quals were held by CFAV that was great else they were bought in using civilian contractors.
It worked well and they were a success but in my opinion the only benefit to Sectors.
On unit i organise a museum trip around ATC Sunday and day trip to the “local” airshow. I was asked to include the Sector in this and the first year saw two SOVs filled the next year we had a coach.
Im not sure if that was a benefit though the invited Squadrons they weren’t in overall control but still had to manage their Squadron element such as collecting Interest, dealing with the allocation and delivering the briefings etc. So it still required Squadron effort. Plenty of work but without the credit.
Each time the borders and/or Sector Commander changed there would be a pep talk to the Sector to highlight the drive for unity and cooperation across the Sector but it was all words and no action. There was rarely combined radio/first aid/AT weekend courses across the Sector and if there was it was a full Sector invite that only saw half attend and only required one hand to count the cadets not from the hosting Squadron.
Are they useful?
To a well run, capable Squadron not likely.
For a keen officer looking for more than OC (or in some cases somewhere to put a damaging OC who can’t mess up visiting Squadrons once every 8 weeks) yes…
But and this is often my acid test question: do the cadets benefit? Nope
This is the critical piece. A Sector Commander can be really useful for supporting new OCs or where there aren’t OCs temporarily, helping with succession planning, doing MOI assessments, new CFAV interviews etc. Encouraging or even organising sector level activities would be brilliant too.
There’s a lot that they could do but in my experience they get dragged into dealing with challenging units or staff and rarely have the capacity to organise sector level activities.
Yeah, I was going to chime into this thread later on when I have more time to write up in detail. But TL;DR, sectors can be great, they can also be rubbish. Completely depends on your Wing SLT and how those sectors are managed!
I can see the point of sectors but our neighbouring squadrons aren’t in our sector. So sector based working isn’t really possible.
Otherwise it seems to be just an extra layer: things that would go to the wing commander or the swipe staff go via the sector instead. It is hit and miss as to whether they get passed on.
Again, hit and miss depending on how it’s managed. Another way of looking at it, is it means certain things can get done quicker as they can be signed off by a Sector OC instead of the Wing Commander. But this only works if you have a Wing Commander who is happy to delegate that authority, and a Sector OC who is happy to come out and help!
As for working together in a sector, I think this normally depends on the unit staff, rather than the Sector OC. And often the actual sector has very little to do with it. When I’ve worked with other Squadrons, it’s not purely because they are in my sector, it’s because I know the staff their and they’ve asked me nicely to come and help.
Think there are definite advantages and disadvantages in a Sector approach but the main 2 points I’d suggest is a). is there appetite for a Sector Commander to take it on, if there’s not then the Sector will fail, and; b). even if a. is in post then it falls upon the rest of the staff in the Sector to all pull in the righ direction.
In our Wing - our Sector is very lucky as we do a lot - have an excellent Sector Commander and some great Staff and we all (by and large) pull in the same direction.
It would only take a small change in any of these above factors to ruin this.
Even in our Wing - not all Sectors are as ‘tight’ as ours - we are lucky.