Monday 6th January 2020
Building on the success of the RAF100 youth engagement programme, which reached a phenomenal 2 million young people throughout the UK, Air Officer Commanding Number 22 Group, Air Vice-Marshal ‘Bunny’ Warren hosted an industry engagement event at the RAF Club on 30th September 2019, and offered an insight into the ‘Inspire’ journey that the Royal Air Force is now embarking upon.
RAF Inspire will develop and deliver a sustainable legacy for the Next Generation Air Force. At is heart is the RAF Trenchard Group that will harness youth engagement, encourage ideas and innovation and deliver world-class educational pathways that directly support the RAF and wider aviation, space and cyber industries.
The RAF aims to reach and engage with one million young people each year for the next 10 years through STEM and inspirational aerospace opportunities. Alongside the traditional Flying Scholarships, future scholarships in space and cyber will build the Next Generation Air Force and support wider UK aviation and defence industries. At the forefront of youth engagement are our RAF Air Cadets, providing unique reach and opportunity for over 40,000 young people across the UK.
The ideas and innovation space is critical to the Royal Air Force’s enduring operational success and depends on us generating and developing innovative ideas and thinking at every level. The RAF Centre for Air and Space Power Studies will drive this pillar of The Trenchard Group through academic nurturing, Fellowships and placements and in collaboration with The Tedder Academy of Leadership, Director of Defence Studies and links to with the Freeman Air and Space Institute.
Educational Pathways will transform training to provide state of the art learning, in modern environments and enabling the delivery of trained personnel to the front-line quicker. The Robson Academy of Resilience and the Tedder Academy of Leadership are already focussing on the mental, physical, spiritual and social wellbeing and the command, leadership and management aptitude necessary to successfully deliver on operations. Further afield, the RAF is engaged with the Aviation Skills Partnership and working with industry and educational bodies. We are also developing new academies and work-ready training pathways across the UK that will offer young people a route to skilled jobs in engineering and aerospace.
In what is likely to be the first of many such events, key industry, academic and charitable partners were presented with the suite of world-class products available to the Next Generation and given a range of ideas where they may wish to connect with the RAF on this exciting journey. Ideas for continued engagement spanned from access to research to provision of a cyber scholarship, sitting as NED’s on committees to supporting award initiatives and we look forward to seeing where these opportunities can take us on this joint journey.
Indeed Air Vice-Marshal Warren said:
“It was great to be able to build on RAF100 conversations to develop deeper and wider partnerships around Inspire, The Trenchard Group and the aerospace sector in the broadest sense. This is the next generation and we have lots of exciting things to do”.
For more information on The RAF Trenchard Group please go to the ‘In the News pages’ in this magazine, or email the Group Mailbox: [email protected]
This news story is included in the Winter edition of Envoy magazine – the free magazine for RAF personnel and your families too. You can sign up online to have your own copy sent to your home (quarterly).
