Air Force Goes Special Ops

[Dave Homewood]

From
www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0611/S00331.htm

Air Force Goes Special Ops
Wednesday, 22 November 2006, 4:02 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Defence Force
New Zealand Defence Force
Te Ope Kaatua O Aotearoa
22 November 2006

Air Force Goes Special Ops

Get ready to Bring It On! That’s the key message from the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) over the next three months as Air Force Special Ops takes flight.

One of the key challenges facing the RNZAF in the medium term is to grow its personnel numbers.

According to Squadron Leader Shaun Sexton, the Air Force’s Director of Recruitment, recent recruitment initiatives have done well but they are starting to have less impact.

“We have to work very hard to fill positions in some key areas. This is of particular importance as it will ensure we have sufficient people to adequately resource and operate our exciting aircraft capabilities of the future”, he said.

Squadron Leader Sexton puts this down to New Zealand’s highly competitive employment and tertiary training markets, plus youth are increasingly disinterested in traditional forms of advertising and seek opportunities to engage with a brand on their own terms.

In order to improve engagement with potential recruits and improve Air Force recruitment success now and in the future the RNZAF is launching the worlds first Vocational Reality Game — Air Force Special Ops.

Air Force Special Ops has been developed in partnership with advertising and IT partners. According to one of the game’s key developers, Bob Moore from Frank Advertising, Air Force Special Ops is a world first.

“It’s a fully integrated reality game and recruitment campaign that challenges, informs, educates, entertains and inspires ", Mr Moore said.

Air Force Special Ops is a 3-month long, web-based interactive game the like of which NZ has never seen before. It is a training exercise, a test of wits, an insight into today’s Air Force and a real-life nationwide manhunt in which gamers will have to use the web, text, email, getting out and about – whatever gets the job done in order to solve the clues and FIND THE PARACHUTIST to win the ultimate Air Force New Zealand Defence Force Te Ope Kaatua O Aotearoa

The hub of Special Ops game play is the website www.airforcespecialops.co.nz It is here that gamers will be tested to the limit with a huge variety of mental, physical, research and knowledge challenges based on careers in the Air Force, their environment and more.

Are you ready to Bring It On.

[corsair67]

Things must be getting pretty bad when you have to launch computer games to get the kids interested in joining the Air Force!

[Dave Homewood]

Indeed.

If numbers are so down in recruitment, why the hell don't they open a few more recruitment offices. They closed down Hamilton's office from where I joined up, and that office covered everywhere south to Taupo and east to Tauranga and west to Raglan. Now interested teeens from that vast expanse of the country have to go to Auckland.

That makes no sense when you consider that Hamilton still has an Army recruitment office!!!!

But apparently the money's better spent on texting children's mobiles and paying big bucks for video games. I can't see either actually being more effective in swaying a person to join the RNZAF as a career then visiting your local recuiter was.

With only five recruitment offices in the country (the four main centres and Palmerston North, they are alienating alot of potentially interested people who won't travel all that way for each meeting or just to browse the options I'd think.

[flyjoe180]

Interest is proportional to presence...

[corsair67]

To be fair, I think the ADF has gone down similar lines with flashy gimmicks to get the kid's attention, but I don't think video games have been one of the options tried yet.

At a recent careers market in Canberra the ADF were out in force, and because I was so busy answering questions about the university I didn't get a chance to go and have a look at their display, but a lot of kids I spoke to had the ADF drink bottles, stickers, etc. They were also handing out a CD-ROM which apparently has lots of "cool stuff" on it too.

I don't know why the NZDF has closed down so many recruiting centres either, but I guess they might have thought that everything can be done online now, either via e-mail or interactive forms?

The RNZAF Recruiting Office at Wigram always looks dead whenever I've gone past.

[Dave Homewood]

"I don't know why the NZDF has closed down so many recruiting centres either, but I guess they might have thought that everything can be done online now, either via e-mail or interactive forms?"

Maybe the initial enquiry stuff, but from my own experience of recruitment I know that a great deal of it is a psychological process where the recruiter will sit and talk with you for ages, assessing your character, intelligence, level of general knowledge, relationaships with others and much more. Not easy to do. And even after that when you sit the test,in my case anyway, at least 75% failed to meet the IQ requiremnet which shocked me - that was after all the vetting and psych assessment they did.

Another thind, should anyone want to lie about their experience or criminal record, etc, it's a lot harder to make stuff up face to face than it is online or by text too.

Speaking of which as an aside, I'm reminded of one of my many meetings with Flt Lt Manson at Hamilton recruitment centre back in 1988. I was in the waiting room, he was already with someone. A young lad came in and an Army Staff Sergeant asked if he could help. The kid said he was wondering if he was still able to join the Air Force with a criminal record. Staff said, sorry, no. Kid said how about the Army then? Staff enquires "What exactly did you get charged for?" Kid replies, "Assault and battery".

Staff says, "Oh, well then you'll be definately ok to get into the Infantry, come into my office..."

He said it in a manner as if assault and battery were almost a pre-requisite. I had to laugh about that.

[phil82]

You think we have problems? There are very real fears that the RAF is in meltdown due to massive numbers of PVRs [early release request]. Just look at these figures for the major Nimrod base.

"With regards to manpower issues up here at ISK 14 out of 18 fairies on one shift have PVR'd in the last month!!Out of 83 supposed bodies avaliable to our shift this week 24 were at work as the rest are either in the gulf, coming back from the gulf or getting trained to go to the gulf, and only 4 were on leave.

Shift was:

1 x FS
1 x C/T rects contoller
1 x SAC line controller (no JNCO's to spare for this job)
3 x AGEs (out of 7)
4 x riggers (1 SNCO and 3 SACs) (out of 20)
2 x sootie SACs (out of 10)
3 x leckies (2 Cpls and 1 x-dressed fairy) (out of 10)
4 Plumbers (out of 15)
5 x faries (out of 18)

And this is before all the redundances and PVRs bite!!!!

The meltdown has begun gentlemen make no mistake about that and I despair for the future. Will no-one sit up and take note??!

And this from a serving officer:

"I love the RAF (yep, sad but I really am proud of everything we stand for and everything we have achieved), the flying training I have received and the job I do has been second to none and I could not wish for some of the opportunities I have been afforded. However, I have reached my option point and, although I've been offered PA and a short term extension to my current terms, will be off as soon as I can. I know that where I am going (Civvy airlines, hopefully) will not be a complete bed of roses but I also know that the RAF that I joined is not the RAF that I am currently serving.

The shop floor of the British military has an inherent ability to keep going despite whatever is thrown at it, particularly in the way of budget cuts and poor equipment. Hopefully the new blood that is currently earning it's spurs or that are joining as we speak will be happy with the state of things as they are as they will know no different and this is what will keep the services going. This is as long as budget cuts do not really hit safety - once that happens then we have a whole new ball game. I just have a fear that this will happen sooner rather than later which is one of the reasons I want to leave now.

As an SH driver, the implementation of JHC has seen nothing but negatives for the RAF. Despite our protestations and early highlighting of our concerns, the few benefits of being in the RAF have been slowly but surely eroded. I do not wish this to sound like the AAC have in any way dragged us down, they have had their terms and conditions reduced and do not appear to have seen any benefit from the amalgamation. The FAA seem to have escaped many of the drawbacks although I beleive that the CHF are starting to feel the bite a little.

Our lords and masters have done precious little to protect us from a government with a vastly over-ambitious foreign policy that a) doesn't want to pay for its military (Brown's "Pay for Gulf War 2 out of your training budget" and his announcement of a 'vote saving' Iraq/Afghan bonus that is then to be funded from the existing MoD budget) and b) is traditionally anti-military (How many current MPs have served in HM Forces?). We have a hierachy full of yes-men and they are all so bloody afraid to upset the apple cart that we have been stitched up time and time again.

We have operational deployments to particularly dodgy parts of the world cropping up with increased frequency and it seems to be made as hard as possible to actually deploy with more and more admin hoops to jump through before they will 'let you go' (as if you want to go) everytime we deploy. When we finally arrive at these godforsaken places it is never down to the skill of the Defence Transport 'Management' Agency - who seem to do everything in there power to make your trip to hell as unpleasant as possible.

We have also had to put up with the civilianisation of the military. This not only manifests iteslf with civvy companies doing half of the tasks that used to be done by the military and then not doing the SDO, Guard Commander, Gate Gurd duties that now appear on our programmes with more and more regularity, but also with all the bo11ocks management speak of 'Line Managers', "Mission Statements" and "Focus Groups". Can someone tell me when a 'Line Manager' last lead a squadron into battle? We need and want military leaders.

Finally, we are sick to death with our own terms and conditions being constantly chiselled away. MQs that are so poorly administered that it takes 6 months to have a serious fault fixed and the promise that in the near future rents will increase to match civilian rates; the lack of health and dental care (at my base station there is no Dental receptionist due to budget cuts - so appointments have to be made via answerphone and the hope that when you are called back you are not flying/deployed), the reduction in benefits snuck in the back door via JPA and the pi55 poor salary increases, assessed by the 'independant' AFPRB that every single time seem to be exactly in line with government targets despite how hard we are working or what extra duties our jobs have attracted.

I realise I have ranted for a while now and some outsiders might look on these and think 'spoilt', 'prima-donna', and 'get a life, join the real world'. The big thing is that I was sold one set of terms and conditions and, by erosions via both the back and front doors, these have now gone. This is probably the case for many that are deciding that they have had enough and is why so many are looking for work in the civvy sector."

[phil82]

Shades of Helen here? Isn't she a big mate of Blair's?

The force cuts, bases closed, civilianization etc, were all initiated due to funding cuts. The air force was told to cut and dash with the budget.

[corsair67]

Colin, have you seen the November NZ Wings? There's an article in it about a Kiwi pilot in 6SQN who will be going onto Typhoons once the Jaguars are retired this year.

The article makes an interesting point about the UK MoD apparently deleting the cannon from the RAF Typhoons due to budget cutbacks. But now because they weren't able to safely resolve the c of g issues, the cannon is being reinstalled - minus the ammo drum!

The stupid thing is that the RAF is being asked to do more and more, but with less support from the Blair Govt. Mind you, the FAA got shafted too!

Sounds familiar, eh?

[phil]

I was in a shopping mall in South Ackland, a couple of months ago, I think it was a Westfield, in Manukau, and they had an Army recruiting affice. No Airforce presence at all.

The US army launched a game about 5 years ago, it was a first person shooter, to try and get people interested. It was quite flash, based on counterstrike or some similar engine. You had to register to get more than the first demo level.

It will be interesting to see how this new Air force game goes, three months is quite a long time to run it. One of the guys at work has got his 16 year old daughter to sign up for it to see what it's like.

There was an armourer called Dave that rang up the recruiter asking to join the airforce. The recruiter asked what he was currently employed doing, to which he honestly replied that he was in the airforce. The recruiter asked what the hell he was on about then, if he was already in, and Dave said 'I want to be in the air force in the ad, where you get to jump out of planes and shoot rockets'

This was back in the days of the really catchy recruiting ad with the song 'the sky is the limit' or something like that. Guys jumping out of hercs and the blunty firing rockets. Made us look really exciting.

Now we have old guys examining cows....

[dpdouglas]

well If you ask me it is a great idea to get the teenagers involved being a teenager myself I have already had an interest in the air force but im pretty sure this is a great way to show us what the air force personnel need to do their job. Good on ya RNZAF!! besides i've already registered for the AFSO