What are the benefits of becoming a VRT Officer?
And why would anyone do it?!
Benefits…
-If you like responsibility, its great, all the responsibility you’d ever want!
-The liklihood that any pesky free time will be decimated.
-A auniform so smart its got a PHD from Cambridge.
-Erm…
Why would anyone do it?
-Self flagellation?
-Mental illness?
As compared to what?
And the women, don’t forget the wimmin.
what’s a ‘auniform’?..
Pink Custard in the officers mess.
Cheap gin.
cheese board at dinner every night in the mess
is it shark infested??
Steward service in the mess.
[quote]ears wrote:
What are the benefits of becoming a VRT Officer?
And why would anyone do it?! [/quote]
Define benefits - and do you mean an Officer as opposed to SNCO, or Officer as opposed to CI?
Cheers
BTI
I’ll wade in and try to bring it back on track.
I became VR(T) as i wanted to be involved in the direction the squadron takes. I am involved in the management of the unit and influence those around me.
The main difference I have found is that the SNCO is working at grass roots. Working with the cadets on a nightly basis, and can directly influence them to achieve their goals. The officer is working in the background to organise events, sort various training opportunities and to deal with the administration on the unit. However, each unit is different and each wing also. I was heavily influenced to become an officer by the many good and dedicated staff that were around me when I was a cadet and they too made me want to achieve greater things when i got into uniform all those years ago.
As an OC I dont get to spend as much time working with the cadets as I’d like to, but thats what comes of command. There are responsibilities (and paperwork) that come with it.
My fellow ACC’ers will joke about the access to the mess, the silver service, (which is always nice! 
) but in reality we are here for the cadets and our own self-development. If you just put on the uniform for status, your in the wrong organisation. I have seen units held back by officers like that.
Main things
Responsibility
Leadership
Command
Good sense of humour, even when the world and bader are falling down around you.
Just my view on things.
Spot on answer above and I completely agree! The ideal model would be Officers organising and directing activities at a more strategic level (both Sqn strategic and higher), whilst our NCOs and CIs would be the ones who put that strategic direction into effect at the tactical level. I say ideal model as all Sqns and Wg’s are different and officers will (and indeed should) find themselves delivering activities, just as SNCOs will organise and plan things.
I spend just as much (if not more) time delivering training to cadets than the SNCOs/WOs on my unit - the background stuff is done at other times!
My two penny’s worth:
Policy Maker not implementer
I wanted to be in a position where, eventually, I would be in charge of a unit and would have the chance to set local policies for the good of the unit as opposed to implementing someone elses policies when I was a CI.
Knowing you can do better
This sounds arrogent but I want to say it anyway. I got commissioned because I knew I could do a better job than the majority of the commissioned officers in our local area.
Projects
I like projects with defined goals and objectives. As an OC I get to decide which projects get off the ground, which ones I want to lead and which ones to let others get into.
For instance, I led our Sqn HQ new build which was horrendous at the time but we got the result we wanted because I was directly involved at every stage of its design, development and completion. And a good thing I was too as god only knows what we would have ended up with if RFCA had had their way.
Equally, I wanted to lead the minibus project we have recently completed because I wanted to get the best of all possible results based on the available finance and I had the power to make decisions.
Staff Development
I really enjoy leading staff development locally and I get a lot out of it. Being commissioned and the OC helps me to drive up standards in the unit at a strategic and tactical level.
Why I think being an officer is good:
- Being in charge is fun but the responsibility is considerable
- Supporting others to achieve their goals
- Wearing the blue suit - its still an honour
- Having the opportunity to ignore ‘advice’ from SNCOs
- Managing a Squadron
- Leading a Squadron (different from the above)
- It stops me doing other more expensive hobbies - Land Rovers and other things spring to mind
- You get a little bit of pay for going away and having fun which can be fired into a ‘holidays’ account
- Being commissioned entitles you to Armed Forces leave from work - win - some organisations are funny about SNCOs in this respect
When being an officer can sometimes be rubbish
- When your cadets let you down
- When your staff let you down
- When the wheel comes off, it is usually your neck on the line
- Dealing with sometimes combative, difficult people like parents
- Implementing policies forced upon you from overzealous WSOs and above
- Telling people no sometimes and seeing the enthusiasm drop from their faces
- Realising that you will probably never get any decent staff development in the organisation
- Realising that you will probably never get the support you deserve from above
- When your service in the Corps leads to conflict in your family life - it will, OC or not!
Seconded. The idea that being an officer means you get less time with the cadets isn’t true at all. It depends on what activities you choose to do with the Corps, being on the Nijmegen team, and staffing leadership courses means I spend a lot of time on cadet development. Because I want to.
Why then, if I like cadet contact, did I become an Officer as opposed to SNCO? That was because as a CI and a CWO on a unit very stuck in its ways, I became frustrated with not being able to be part of the decision making process, with very little say on how to move the unit into a new direction. I had input, but the decisions were made by the officers, largely opposite to what my input was.
The cheese was key as well.
Benefits:
Getting a nice shiny uniform.
Getting to change decisions I disagreed with in the past.
Being trusted with more responsibility
Pay
Being a link to the outside world, and getting good feedback from others about your cadets and staff.
If we were to interpret this thread as querying the benefits of VRT uniformed service in comparison with ATC Adult WO/SNCO service, here’s an interesting alternative context to consider.
In Canada, the only uniformed adult staff are commissioned officers. No ASNCOs at all- they don’t even have what we had as the original ‘middle ground’ of AWOs.
Any adult SNCOs that (rarely) serve with Royal Canadian Air Cadet squadrons are permanent appointments from regular service, and aren’t CFAVs. (Just for info: the RCAirC does also have CIs).
I must ask how they find things work for them, with their existing combination of an Officers-only cadre of uniformed staff. Of course, it’s what they’ve always been used to, but I suspect that they use Officers in a much-wider spectrum of roles, and utilise senior Cadets in key D+D exec roles.
wilf_san
^^^^ is that not a very similiar if not identical system that the CCF employ?? having only Officers?