Examination of witnesses (Questions 414
- 419)
WEDNESDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2000
AIR VICE-MARSHAL
B BURRIDGE, AIR
VICE-MARSHAL
H G MACKAY, COMMODORE
M KERR, MAJOR
GENERAL A DENARO
and MAJOR GENERAL
J C B SUTHERELL
Chairman: Thank you very much gentlemen. The
first question will be addressed to you all by Mr Hepburn.
Mr Hepburn
414. It is generally accepted that society has
changed and people are less deferential now and more aware of
their rights. What sort of challenges does this present you with
when you are training young officers?
(Major General Denaro) Two things which are very interesting
were brought up earlier. Firstly, the vast majority, certainly
coming into Sandhurst, are graduates. Secondly, they come from
the highways and byways of the country. There is no elitism, they
just need to pass through a selection system which identifies
their potential. Once that is identified then we teach them leadership
and command. We have had to change in a number of ways. We have
had to change our attitude because we are no longer training raw
schoolboys aged 18, but by and large training pretty mature people
of 23 who have done a tertiary education already. The attitude
of the instructor had to change. Nonetheless most of them were
very green and completely unconnected with the military so in
some other areas we had to take them pretty slowly. We found that
they are softer in many ways and therefore the physical development
had to be more gradual, always remembering, and very importantly,
that the standards at the back end of the year, when they are
commissioned, have to be exactly the same as, if not higher than
they were in the past. Those are two specifics. There is a social
selfishness about youngsters nowadays, which is not necessarily
their fault; they have been hugely focused on getting their own
education, their own degrees and it carries on into their desire
to have some have some kind of qualifications when they leave.
Breaking down that self-centredness by making them think more
about others is one of our more important tasks nowadays than
it used to be. I suppose the last point I should make is that
the understanding of service is not the same now in society as
it was when I joined. We have to teach about service, we have
to teach about self sacrifice, about duty and loyalty. We do that,
certainly at Sandhurst, by explaining the real basics. If I may
say so, I believe that depends enormously on integrity. From integrity
comes the comradeship which gives us our fighting power. We have
to have comrades when we go into Sierra Leone or Kosovo or wherever
it is. The integrity that the young bring in from society is pretty
grey in areas. I suppose that we lay down a rule of thumb which
is that behaviour that offends is unacceptable and we take things
from there on upwards.
Chairman
415. Do you still have dogs and horses wandering
through the building?
(Major General Denaro) We do; we do indeed.
416. Do people ever complain about that?
(Major General Denaro) Only when the commandant's
dog misbehaves.
(Air Vice-Marshal Mackay) What we see in the Royal
Air Force, though I would not disagree with anything General Denaro
has said, is that it places much greater demands upon our instructional
staff; the flight commanders who have to put up with a raw material
which is less prepared to take at face value what the instructor
says. Many years ago when I went through they were these God-like
beings who told you what it was and you accepted it. That is not
the case now. Fortunately we have adapted our training of our
instructors such that they get much more training now than they
used to and more and more actually are instructors of an age that
they have the same values as the young people coming in. Over
the past few years—I am sure all the colleges have found
it—there has been a difficult transition, but certainly
where we are we seem to be emerging now into being able to cope
with these changes which undoubtedly happened in society.
(Commodore Kerr) I would endorse all that. In the
Navy we have fewer horses and dogs than some establishments elsewhere,
though we certainly have a few dogs and parrots perhaps. The thing
we have to do is catch their attention. They come to us much later
in life and that is probably something you will want to explore
later. They are much more demanding, they have seen quite a lot
more of life, they have been in some cases lawyers, certainly
teachers, they have led expeditions to strange places on earth,
up the Himalayas, down the Andes, to the Barrier Reef. They know
a great deal more about life than the average 18-year-old does.
If you do not keep their attention, if you do not keep their interest,
they are off. They have tried two or three other things, they
have tried the Navy and there is nothing to keep them. I expect
that is the same with the other two services. They are not required
to stay. They can tell me they want to go and the next day they
are out. We have to keep their attention.
Mr Hepburn
417. With those changes in mind how have you
evolved officer training, how have you evolved it to cope with
these changes? Are you flexible enough to adapt to these changing
styles in recruitment? Is a revolution needed within training
or is it possible just to go through an evolutionary period?
(Commodore Kerr) It is probably true to say we are
going through a period of fairly fast evolution at present. We
have had a number of internal reviews and the Defence Training
Review, which you know all about, is happening as well. In the
Navy we have shortened our course so that it is down to a very,
very compressed year. One of the aims of that was to get them
out into the Fleet as fast as possible; this business of catching
their interest. You also have to structure it so that you take
in all walks of life, anything. The scope is very wide in terms
of social background, in terms of skills, in terms of education;
there is a minimum for education but there is no minimum for anything
else. After a year you have to turn out the same standard. That
has had a terrific effect on the way we do things. If you were
to pin me down on the one thing we really do need, it is supervision
so that every single person is very carefully watched all the
way through.
(Major General Denaro) I would agree with that entirely.
Evolution is what it is all about. When I came to Sandhurst I
was told "For goodness sake, don't change it. It's constantly
being changed. Don't change it". Of course we do and must
rely on some of the old principles, the wonderful traditions and
all those points, but it has to evolve, the course has to evolve.
The transition from 40% graduates in 1994 to 92% now is a huge
change. That has forced us to evolve. Also operations are forcing
us to move with the times, if not ahead of the times, so that
we can produce young officers who within months are leading their
soldiers in battle. Several of the young parachute officers who
were on that operation in Sierra Leone and one from the Special
Forces had been through Sandhurst in my time and that certainly
has made the others quickly alert.
(Air Vice-Marshal Mackay) I really have very little
to add to that. We continually review our training. Certainly
at the Royal Air Force Cranwell there was a large review and the
training time was increased about eight years ago. Similarly DTR
has come along at the same time as we have been relooking at the
length of time we train our officers. Once DTR is done and dusted,
we shall be setting up a training needs analysis to take a look
at our whole officer training, the length, what is in the syllabus,
etcetera. We expect that there will be an extension in that.
418. Did these graduates you are getting in
make a conscious decision to get a degree and then join the forces
to go into officer training or is it that opportunities for other
graduate jobs have been closed so it is another option for them?
(Air Vice-Marshal Mackay) We get all sorts. There
are those people who have always seen as their background that
they would end up in the armed forces and because for the past
30 years or so, certainly in the Royal Air Force, a large proportion
of officer entries to the Royal Air Force were university graduates,
that was seen as the natural way to get in there. We have other
people who had graduated, who had worked for McDonald's for a
couple of years then decided they were going to come to the Royal
Air Force. We get others who are straight from school, we get
a large number of ex airmen. We really get all sorts and what
we have to do is to turn them out at the end of a particular time
as competent young officers. That is not to say at all that we
are a sausage machine. We take all these disparate elements from
society and we turn them into officers, but once they are officers
they are just as disparate as they were before. They are not all
the same and that is the challenge: we have to build upon their
particular strengths, to cope with their weaknesses.
Mr Brazier
419. What is the practical cut-off age limit
for air crew, with the very high costs involved in them, to get
return on service?
(Air Vice-Marshal Mackay) I could not be absolutely
certain of the maximum age for recruitment. I would say something
like 27 but I shall get back to you on that.[2]
2 Note by witness: Maximum age is 24 years for
pilots and 26 years for navigators. Back
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