UK AOC Newsletter - Feb 2011 |
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RIVET
JOINT
As
part of this new agreement, the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base,
Nebraska, has been tasked to train the initial cadre of RAF aircrew. The first
group of RAF aircrew arrived at Offutt AFB on 11 January 2011. Pilots,
navigators, electronic warfare officers, intelligence operators and airborne
maintenance technicians from 51 Squadron at RAF Waddington will undergo
training that is standard for anyone in the USAF assigned to the RC-135V/W
Rivet Joint. Wing Commander Garry Crosby RAF is in the initial training group
and will assume command of 51 Squadron in June 2011.
VISITS
AND EVENTS
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UK CHAPTER It is probably a little late to wish that you all have an excellent 2011,
but I hope you do anyway. We held our
AGM last week in the RAF Club and it was a really good evening with most of the
Board present along with lots of members and some new faces. Sqn Ldr Roy Plumley RAF gave an excellent
briefing and received the Chapter prize as top Defence Academy MESE student in
2010 as well as a Chapter plaque and a Certificate of Commendation. If you want
to see a summary of my address which highlights the successes of 2010 and
aspirations for the future, you will find it in the AGM minutes on the Chapter
website. The one plea I will repeat here
is for you, the members, to get involved as much as you can, not least in
recruiting and joining in our functions. I actually had a letter and email
exchange from one member after last month’s missive, which is a first, for
which I am very grateful. As President I was invited to help the UK EW Tower of Excellence (ToE) - which
if you don’t know is a MoD-sponsored
consortia of industry, small & medium enterprises (SME), Dstl and
academia - on an EW response to the Government’s green paper “Equipment,
Support & Technology for UK Defence and Security: A Consultation Paper”.
If you haven’t read the green paper and are interested, you can download a copy
from: http://defenceconsultations.org.uk/Cm7989.pdf EW gets a mention in paragraph 49. The aim of the work with the ToE will be to succinctly add further EW content and examples of the role of EW and how we can get it right as well as perhaps examples of when and how it goes wrong. In my work with the AOC National HQ in Alexandria I have been at pains to
emphasise a number of points, two of which I will mention here. The first is
that there are too many EW conferences, particularly in the US, from which
delegates and exhibitors have to choose to spend their limited time and funds. Good speakers are scarce assets too. The
second is the number of US-only classified conferences which appear to be
insensitive to the reality of on-going coalition operations. I am pleased to
say that HQ has reacted to an extent and plan to run two conferences
back-to-back on Advanced Electronic Attack and Modelling & Simulation in
March in Las Vegas. Several days will be open to the 4-eyes community for those
with a current SECRET level clearance. You should be hearing about these events in an email shot. The AOC are
particularly keen to have serving military attend for which the admission price
is low. We all know that the military are under stringent budget constraints
and I have pointed this out. Nevertheless it is a start, so I hope some of the
UK Chapter manage to attend. The program looks pretty good (check it out online
at www.crows.org). This is part of the
message I received: “We made a conscious decision to put two key events
together to maximize limited budgets. In addition, at the request of AF-A5RE,
the Advanced Electronic Attack conference has been opened to the 4-eyes
community on 14-15 March 2011 at the USAF Weapons School. On 16 March the first
day of the Modeling & Simulation conference was opened as well. Then,
following the first day of the Mod/Sim conference, special tours of the USAF
threat petting zoo will be set up for the 4-eyes participants (to include
spouses). There will
also be plenty of networking and for those that must, the inevitable golfing
(take sunscreen!)”. Before anyone asks, no I don’t
know what the “threat petting zoo” is but it sounds interesting! For my past sins, I have been invited to a roundtable on Directed Energy
weapons at RUSI next week. I will let you know if I hear anything interesting. In the meantime, the Board are working on more visits for 2011 including maybe to BAE Systems at Warton, a session on EW history in the RAF Club and perhaps a briefing from UKTI on export issues – all of these depend on their being sufficient interest from you, so please let us know!
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