Ah no of course…
My bold. Yes you haven’t directly threatened anyone with it but you were the one to mention it and then say “no threat of court”.
No. We know that they are overflying our pers and deal with that. A known known.
Making decisions without information is called guessing and that’s not good in relation to safety. So we deal with what we do know. Our policy, and the over flight, which can allow someone to make a decision, should they feel empowered to do so. If they feel unable we need to have a fallback.
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I was going to ask “likelihood or severity”, and you’ve answered that since.
But making an argument for severity is concerning - we have a whole section of our activities categorised as “high risk to life” and in the vast majority of those we control our way out of “don’t do it”.
The implication of how things have been worded suggests that the first consideration is to abandon an event if we see a drone overhead, which isn’t a control measure.
Factoring in ALARP, it’s also not “reasonably practical” to do so - the breakdown process increases risk and removes other controls, and many events cant just be left midway through for traffic control and public safety reasons.
Some of what you say is good and promising and sounds like you understand things from a far better perspective on volunteer management than we’re used to seeing - perhaps part of the problem, because we’re still our cynical old selves.
We have seen recently, however, attempts at imposing authority on a non-cadet garden BBQ, so…
I don’t think you’re personally approaching this with the wrong idea in mind - it would be neglectful to an an object that might fall out of the sky, but the way things are written are and will be very important.
I’ve just given the data above. A 0.00001% chance of cadet being injured. That alone should be enough to scrap all the crapcoming from HQ and allow us to use, what in reality, is a childs toy.
@Hercules - As a point, I admire the fact that someone from policy is coming to try to engage and provide rationale BUT that I can’t see anyone agreeing to your points and having a lot of people in this forum who have spent a lot of time in RAFAC, maybe the advice from the informed masses would be that this is a redundant policy which needs immediately redacting on further review? As a wider policy, RAFAC should be encouraging drone use and should be providing any and all opportunities to interact with them as they damn sure ain’t actually flying!
Whilst you show an average the bias of incidents is more post 2020 when you drill down into the figures.
I’m just not sure that anyone would organisationally accept any risk they could reasonably have mitigated.
Please take this for what it is, an interim measure, whilst we built our framework.
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Rogue individuals or squadrons, well I never. The problem with many is to ask for forgiveness after the event and after being caught!!
This is almost a Zero risk. The RAFAC does not require a zero risk. The RAFAC required ALARP. Unfortunately the policey as written is not ALARP, its ZERO risk, meaning no activity. So we are stopping another branch of “air” from the RAFAC, along with flying scholarships, gliding, parachuting, hanggliding. I’m waiting for the stop order when someone relises I get the cadet making paper planes for PoF because they have a pointy bit on the end.
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Well, I suppose if I am on an event and I’m overflown by a drone it’s highly likely I won’t make the decision to remove people. The likelihood of it being a nefarious one is so low that the overall risk is at worst, medium.
Plus I’ll be a moving target in my bike / canoe / walking which further reduces the likelihood. 
I mention it from my own experience of having been in court supporting colleagues who have made similar decisions, and it’s not pleasant.
There is zero threat here.
Sadly, it’s just a reality of our modern world. One where litigation is commonplace against individuals and organisations that are seen as easy targets. I’d like to give people an easy framework that does everything in our power, that’s reasonable and proportionate, so we keep our people safe. As a consequence protect ourselves.
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Oh, and BTW the CAA have already MITIGATED the risk by insiting on licences, operator IDs etc. Why does 2FTS constantly think they are mightier than the CAA - we see it with flghts in private aircraft and use of private trianing schools.
Hercules, what are your advanced qualifications above what the professionals at the CAA has to enable you to work on this policy?
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There were 80 accidents/serious incidents involving RPAS reported to the CAA during 2022. This
is a decrease from 2021 where 129 reportable accidents/serious incidents were reported
In 2022 there were no fatal or serious injuries reported, and this is the same as the previous five
years.
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That only goes so far though. Just Culture has its limits.
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Ahh, so we agree HQ are making things up as they go along. Outstanding.
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By contrast, the sensitive (non-public) data recorded 176 incidents in April ‘24 alone. I did say earlier that we use both. Of note, no military data is included in either, but we didn’t use this as CAA and police data Is more appropriate to us as an operator.
I agree risk of an occurrence is low, especially if we can plan knowing how it will be used, but the potential severity is high. Therefore we need to talk about it and where necessary avoid it.
I get the impression that people think I’m making this stuff up. Please ask yourself why would I do this ? I’m making unnecessary work for the team that can be more usefully channeled elsewhere.
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What are other cadet forces doing? Have the ACF and SCC also imposed that they must leave an activity if a drone is flown overhead? Or are we getting too tied up in being an ‘aviation themed’ organisation. Is there a ‘drone expert’ elsewhere? Surely the level of suggested risk is the same, no matter if we are a CAA approved authority or not (assuming other CFs are not).
Also echoing thoughts above about this being yet another thing to remember. If I saw a drone at a public event in a year or two when all this has died down I’d not think of doing anything.
Please see my other answer. Not making anything up.
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We are working through this to get to an end game.
As I’ve said this is an interim measure.
We are bringing an element of ‘air’ that honestly has been done so appallingly in the past that it needed a wholesale overhaul. The new process when it’s rolled out will, I hope, bring something that is firstly safe, easy to access, and crucially easy to authorise and assure.
And also insured by RAFAC which it wasn’t previously. Additionally, there will be bought assets for use, to make accessibility easier for those who may not be in a position to buy a drone.
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Sorry to be naive, but how was it done appaullingly? Were there a myriad of accidents I am unaware of? Or was it just that policy from HQ hadn’t kept up with the times?
I don’t think anyone is saying you are making anything up. What they are saying (so it appears to me) is they aren’t convinced by the arguments you are making. I think I’m definitely in that category, but I have no real interest in the activity other than a peripheral interest in our approach to risk management.
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