That’s just it, we didn’t do ‘green’ years ago as in formal fieldcraft. If someone wanted to crawl around in the mud, they joined the Army cadets, if they wanted to do more technical stuff, they joined the ATC.
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The problem is that we use fieldcraft to deliver more skills than just the actual fieldcraft element.
Fieldcraft in the organisation needs to change and will forever be limited in scope compared to our green peers but is here to stay.
How it will look in 12-18 months let alone 5-10 years is anyones guess at the moment.
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I’ve said it before…
I’ll add that the part I’ve added bold to was potentially unfair, based on rumours of the time, and since then plenty of noise has been made about no intention to reduce or bin fieldcraft - indeed I know a lot of work is happening to further develop it.
In 50 years though… There’s potential for sufficient shift in intent to reflect broader defence changes, but we should be good for a while.
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Who knows? Directed energy weapons? X-Ray specs? Personal jet packs? Mobile Infantry out of Starship Troopers?
That said I recently had sight of a Fieldcraft manual from, I think, 1938. Most of it would be recognisable to someone picking up the current PAM.
How many cadets and CFAVs would be lost if the RAFAC dropped fieldcraft?
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Turn that question around. How many squadrons delivery ‘effective’ fieldcraft?
I’m not talking about what people think is fieldcraft, but proper FC based training 
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Not many as we’re not allowed to!
The new pts syllabus is really clear… Any level can be delivered on Sqn… Aslong as you have quald staf… Thats the challenging bit
The quals need to be easier to achieve and proportionate to the PTS.
And wing then need to actually run them.
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Amen!
Fieldcraft and shooting (L98) go hand-in-hand. If the RAFAC gets rid of fieldcraft, there would be no justification for retaining the cadet GP. The only shooting available would then be air rifle (about the only ‘air’ remaining in air cadets) and clay pigeon (as part of AT). Loss of fieldcraft and GP shooting would be a major disincentive to cadets and CFAVs who joined for the military youth experience.
If we got rid of shooting and fieldcraft in RAFAC then we’d be a much more civilian oriented aerospace organisation, the cadets aren’t exactly going to go on bombing runs or air combat manoeuvring whilst on AEF🤔
They will if they complete the new Diamond level on the PTS
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Your point is unfortunately disproven by history. It’s only recently that any figure above .0025% of the organisation was able to carry a rifle in the field under RAFAC rules.
The Cadet GP has existed and been in use by us far longer.
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Considering we are only recently pushing this agenda I’m not sure it would work out well.
The org is, if anything, going to take more advantage of the service rifle in the coming years I suspect.
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Sure.
If we can get the L103s back out to sqn hubs.
Else. Nope.
A lot of the DPs (certainly on the Army side of things) got chopped during lockdown, there is a lot less of them out there.
What about SB and FB target rifle?
Most cadets never get to fire the target rifle. When’s the last time cadets fired any sort of 22 rifle - No 8 or the plastic replacement? Most cadets I know typically shoot with air rifles first, before progressing on to the GP for CLF.
My argument is that the GP is a greens weapon. If the RAF drops fieldcraft, surely all other associated greens activities will follow for the RAFAC. Cadets can’t fire the GP wearing blues uniform, whereas the air rifle can be fired on squadron and while the cadets are in working blues. They learn all of the principles of marksmanship and gain marksmanship badges on the air rifle. I don’t agree with dropping fieldcraft or the GP, but playing devil’s advocate, why would the org need the GP if fieldcraft is scrapped?