Page 14 - The Cormorant 2018

Air Service Introduction
Wing Commander Dave Tait
What RAF100 means to me Wing Commander Matt D’Aubyn
SINCE MY FATHER JOINED the RAF as a cadet at RAF College Cranwell in 1970, it is amazing to think that between us our family has participated in nearly half of the Royal Air Force’s entire existence. His career,
during which he flew approximately 12,000hrs in helicopters, took him from the mighty Chipmunk to the Sea King as a Search and Rescue pilot;
we often think of manned flight in purely fixed wing terms and I think we can sometimes forget to commemorate what a revolution the invention and refinement of the helicopter made to modern air warfare. For my part,
I started my flying career on the mighty Sepecat Jaguar before converting to the Eurofighter Typhoon. The technological leap forward between these platforms is staggering and the fact that a pilot was able to transition directly between the 2 is perhaps a celebration of the rate of technological progress. Whereas one predominantly ‘flew’ a Jaguar, one now ‘operates’ a Typhoon. It is less about hand eye co-ordination and more about capacity, situational awareness and decision making. As 2018 sees the arrival of the F-35 Lightning in the UK, I hope that the next generation will be similarly inspired by aviation and the Service.
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IT SEEMED A LONG-TIME coming for the RAF officers of ACSC 21 from receiving the exciting news that they had been selected for ACSC
to arriving at the Defence Academy. After getting-to- grips with the Virtual Learning Environment and the plethora of pre-Course
reading which it contained, it was great to finally meet our fellow Course-mates and to begin to get used to our new environment. The single-Service phase had the difficult task of ensuring that all participating officers had a broad understanding of the current roles, and any associated challenges, within the RAF in the space of 2 weeks. In order to do this, the phase was divided into 4 broad segments comprising: Command,
Leadership and Management; Ends; Ways; and
Means. In addition, students were grouped into
their respective branches and asked to provide a presentation to the RAF cohort detailing the status oftheirbranch,likelyfuturetravel,andrisks:itwas “ these presentations that were to provide some of
the most useful information of the phase. ...that this is
The student presentations highlighted a number of the first period consistent themes across branches, namely: how of growth the RAF busy the RAF currently is operationally with SHADER has experienced in and NATO Assurance Missions; and second,
the resource challenges surrounding the RAF’s capability uplift granted by the Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015. These resource issues, particularly surrounding the supporting Defence Lines-Of-Development, were discussed at length by guest speakers who laid bare the realities of the current climate in which Defence and government
functions. But positively, it was also clear that this is the first period of growth the RAF has experienced in decades and is a clear indication of our continuing worth to government – therefore, it was clear that
as future senior leaders we all have a responsibility to lead the RAF through this transition and to understand and articulate why it is necessary to embrace innovation and seek efficiencies.
It was awe-inspiring to hear from both student officers and presenters of the operational roles
and functions that the Service performs on a daily basis, even though these functions may not be at the forefront of British media coverage and widely appreciated. Thus, it was the cohort’s challenge to take this knowledge into the ‘Joint’ environment and be confident proponents of Air Power, its utility, and importantly, how it can be integrated at the Joint operational level.
decades... ◆◆◆