Journey to become an RAF officer

Good luck mate. I'm joining the ranks with the hope of commissioning in a few years.

Thanks! What are you hoping of joining as?

I shall aim to regularly update this post with all progress, daily if I can - a few times a week otherwise.

Today's revision: RAF stations. Nearly there....

Opts

You need to include NATO in your revision list, who is part of NATO, what is its role, how has its role changed since its formation to now, most recent members, what does it stand for, what does the RAF contribute to NATO.

Get cracking with your fitness big time, you want to be aiming for 2.4km time of less than 10 minutes, 40+ pushups and 40+ situps, and it would be worth doing a couple of bleep tests where you want to be aiming for around level 12.

If you can hit all that before you even start IOT you'll be in a very good position, plus it shows good motivation in your interviews.

The rest of your prep looks pretty good. Make sure you have a think about why you have done everything you have in your life. Why Logistics? Why officer not junior ranks? Why this degree instead of that one? What opportunities were their at University for sport? What did you get involved in out of those opportunities?

I wrote out a timeline of my life to help keep it clear, e.g Adventure training course in 2009, Football Captain 2011-2013 etc. Makes it easier for you to remember everything you've done, include all your jobs, clubs, activities etc.

Also make sure you get to a station and visit someone, ring the unit and get it sorted. Looks good for motivation plus you can see what the job is really like and back up your reasons for choosing that role.

Good luck with your application.

Firstly, thanks for your reply it's very helpful.

Regarding NATO I've studied it pretty comprehensively, I find it quite interesting even if Anders' name is a bit of a mouthful and hard to remember

(Re: Drewski, I have some good opinions on NATO and current affairs as a whole.)

Fitness is a thing I need to work on, I'm naturally pretty fit - ran the 2.4k for the first time last week in 10:06 so something to work on there. I enjoy it and the weathers nice at the moment so got no excuses!

Thanks for the tips about remembering my personal information, I'll make sure I do that - and try to extrapolate areas of leadership potential from my experiences.

Also I think I need to work on my justification for the role, I know it's what I've wanted for a long time so hopefully it will just be a case of mapping out all of the specific reasons.

Is sorting out a station visit a case of getting in contact with the AFCO, or should I email a station directly?

Thanks again.

That's good, at the AFCO they like NATO its like their buzzword topic for interviews, at OASC they want that knowledge backed up with an opinion and deeper understanding of Why/How we do things rather than just regurgitating what we do.

10:06 is a great time, if you keep up the consistent training you'll be at a very good level of fitness. Anything that starts with 9 minutes is big tick in the box.

Justification for a specific role is quite difficult when you aren't 100% on what it actually involves, but seeing the role on a station and asking someone who does the job what its like and what it involves then leads you to some great answers as to why you might like to do it.

Station visit wise, it depends on the unit. Some of them on their website will have a number you can call to speak to about arranging a possible work experience visit - explain you are going through selection at the moment, others it would be worth calling the AFCO and see if they can at least get you a point of contact to ask if they can't arrange one for you.

Are you near to any stations/do you have transport available to get to one?

"Syria shows what happens when you don't intervene, Iraq shows what happens when you do...."

Don't forget you've got Libya sandwiched between them - and Ellamy was a textbook example of the kind of high-technology, (very) limited ground-based war the West would like to fight whenever possible. You could probably refine that to suggest Libya is what happens when you have a plan - or at least an end-state, whereas Iraq is what happens when you don't have a plan beyond the initial contact.

Also been reading today about the issue surrounding Iran and US co-operation - I never realised that the Iranian Quds helped Iraqi militias to set up IED's that were used against US / UK forces in Iraq.

Iranian weaponry was also found on the hands of the Taleban in Afghanistan. Of course, can't prove whether it was obtained with the knowledge of the Iranians or otherwise...