Quote of the week





The RAF was a comparatively tightly organised, high tech force, by and large with more modern equipment and operational command techniques than the Navy, and more so the Army. One consequence was that they were able to collate and distill information fast for their own purposes.



The upshot was that they had more up to date PR to hand on a regular basis.

Thanks to old_rat Posted: 16 Jan 2009 17:41







Friday 6 February 2009

One of my best mates

I have known Already Jacked Genius since 1980 when he completed the Air Warfare Intelligence Course at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. Shortly after the course he volunteered to take a sabbatical from the Army and to undertake air intelligence duties.

The Intelligence Branch Officers of the RAF, being the premier service of the Armed Forces, have unique capabilities in their arsenal specializing in gathering, analysing and providing strategic and tactical defence intelligence – both in peace and war. It’s a highly specialized field that offers exciting opportunities within a fast-moving, international environment which Jacko appreciated to the full as his previous intelligence duties were concerned with ensuring that acetate traces of the German plains were accounted for in the unit MOD F102 !

I next met him 1987 when, following a request to extend his secondment ,we were both posted to the Tactical Imagery Wing, where his abilities were tested to the full as he attempted to manage (not very successfully to tell the truth) the rapid interpretation of incoming reconnaissance imagery. Again an eye opener for this, as then, recently commissioned Intelligence Corps LE officer whose only previous experience with imagery was a short ground phot course at NITAT with `big Tom` - allegedly a hero in his own darkroom !

Sadly, I lost touch with Jacko when I was promoted (before my time) and became Squadron Intelligence Officer producing intelligence assessments in order to brief personally, aircrews before their missions and subsequently both the Iron Lady & the Cabinet.

Jacko and I met him again in 1993 when I was the Senior Intelligence Officer to the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC) at RAF Brampton in Bedfordshire, and he had to pick up some high quality satellite enhanced map coverage for an adventure training exercise that he was Quartermaster for.

Luckily, our paths crossed again in late 1998 when I met him in the corridor at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) where I was in charge of operational planning and management for the Balkans campaign and he was the Assistant to the ADC for Maj Gen Alison Dyson, the Army’s diversity Champion.

It was during this short meeting that I discovered that Jacko was about to take a second secondment to the RAF in order to understand more how the Army could learn from the professional standards and methods offered by the Provost & Security Branch in relation to defence security risk management matters. He had spent the previous six months with the RMP - the real powers behind Army Security and great friends of the P&SS Branch - Us Masons must stick together !

I would not hesitate in recommending Already Jacked Genius to any employer. However, his penchant for using the interweb during work hour should be closely moderated.

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