From JR Miles, DS8b
CONFIDENTIAL
INTIAL
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
Main Building Whitehall London SW1A 2HB
Telephone 01-218 6214 (Direct Dialling)
01-218 9000
(Switchboard)
B Watkins Esq
Defence Department
FCO
Your reference
Our reference
D/DS8/36/6
Date
*7 July 1978
Mr Muro / By Winter
/M Writer Puioji
to consider & adine
H-
Deas Brian,
RAF LOAN SERVICE POSTS
1.
•
The RAF will face a critical shortage of pilots of Flight Lieutenant rank over the next four years, and the Air Force Board is currently looking at ways to alleviate the effect which this shortage will have upon our front-line capability. To try and ensure that the greatest number of available pilots are deployed in operational squadrons, the Air Force Department has considered ways of reducing the numbers of Junior Officer Pilots (JOPs) serving in non-flying appointments. However the most that we can do in this direction is unlikely to solve our problem completely, and we ( must also look at the possibilities for the withdrawal of JOPS from Loan Service.
2. Thirty-six JOPS are currently serving on loan with foreign armed forces and with BAe overseas: six each in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (BAe), eighteen in Oman, five in Brunei and one in Hong Kong. We feel that for some of these countries the political and military reasons for which Loan Service posts were established have diminished over the years and we wish now to seek your views on possible disestablishment which we may consider. I have outlined below our reasons for wishing to look again at the level of our LSP commitment overseas.
Hong Kong. The JOP helicopter instructor is our remaining LSP officer with the RHKAAF. As an extension of his tour by four months has been requested we would not consider recovering this post until the present officer's tour ends in 1979 but we are working on the assumption that the post will be civilianised thereafter.
Saudi Arabia (BAe). The six JOPS on loan to BAe for the important SADAP project are in posts which BAe has tried to fill from the contract market. As fast jet instructor posts they have useful training value and we would not wish to recall them at this stage.
4
Kuwait. The RAF Element of the Kuwait Liaison Team consists mainly of airmen, and the six JOPS are helicopter, basic flying, transport aircraft and ground school instructors. In view of the Kuwaiti decision in 1975 to buy Mirage aircraft, the AFD now review all posts on their merits when they come up for replacement. We are aware that no replacements have been requested for the two JOPs whose tours end this year, and we would wish to recover both these and also the other four posts when the present incumbents end their tours (in 1979 and 1980).
CONFIDENTIAL IN AL
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