The Royal Air Force is making steady progress toward its goal of expanding its reserve strength by 50 percent, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Responding to a written question from Ben Obese-Jecty MP, Defence Minister Louise Sandher-Jones said the RAF is advancing efforts through “recruitment activity, structural reform and strategic alignment.” The expansion forms part of commitments set out in the Strategic Defence Review 2025, published in July.
Sandher-Jones explained that the RAF is “prioritising the growth of the Part Time Volunteer Reserves, who are the reserve of first choice for operational support, while also enhancing the management and training of the Strategic Reserve to maximise the skills and experience of ex-Regular personnel.”
The Part Time Volunteer Reserve, which includes personnel attached to operational flying units, air mobility, and intelligence squadrons, is hoped to play a key role in reinforcing the regular force during surge periods and overseas deployments. The Strategic Reserve, meanwhile, retains trained ex-Regular personnel who can be reactivated for service when required.
The Strategic Defence Review 2025 called for a rebalanced RAF structure capable of supporting expeditionary operations and contributing to emerging joint-force priorities such as uncrewed systems, digital integration, and homeland resilience.
All well and good but we need more combat aircraft
How about ordering at least 100 more combat aircraft? The current number is ridiculous. Well, like everything else in the armed forces.
And who’s going to fly them?
Every review highlights the importance of the Reserves
And they are important.
So this is nothing new, and the Cold War is back with a vengeance.
And in some areas it never left
So….window dressing, is it not?
As what should be happening is ramping up across the board.
But, no.
We’ll increase an already small reserve force, with no aircraft of its own, a bit more.
Splendid.
Incredible isn’t it, we hear (the most redent yesterday) about expecting war of some nature with Russia within a few years yet the Govt seems to think announcements of this nature somehow truly prepare us for it. Reserves are vital but equally when we don’t even have properly tooled up front line war fighters so this is putting bandaids on present realities, not truly providing real reserves to back up those frontline war fighters.
It’s alright taking the line about Russia couldn’t possibly stand up against even EuroNATO but we have no idea what support Russia might employ as time passes, there are a whole range of peripheral external forces that might be employed on the basis that Russia has been attacked which will be an inevitable meme they will employ.
The reserve Intelligence chappies will be able to tell us the Russians are coming in a quicker and more detailed manner. We won’t be able to stop them, but at least we will know they are coming.
Grow the rserves by scraping 20 aircraft. Thats MOD/RAF sense for you. Talking rubbish while doing nothing but moving numbers and figures about to make it look like some thing is getting better. How about the MOD/CDS and all the other deluded wind bags ORDER SOME KIT.
One thing the RAF is failing to address is the use of reserves in aircraft engineering roles. The problem is how do you make sure reserve engineers remain current on type?
With great difficulty I presume.
Davey, are you sure that there are no RAF reservist aircraft engineers? That surprises me somewhat. I was REME – we had and still have hundreds of reservist tradesmen.
It is hard to tell given the RAuxAF roles stated by Squadron. ( Royal Auxiliary Air Force and Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment.)
Most do not support aircraft types directly, so I assume would not have aero engineers.
The force has no aircraft assets, no helicopter assets, and no GBAD assets whatsoever.
Several Sqns have a Force Protection role, and are aligned to regular RAF Regiment FP Wings.
3 or 4 are Intelligence and Space related.
Others are RAF Police, or field units supporting the RAF SHF, AT Force, with Loadies, Movements, and others.
The ones aligned to each area of the RAF, so one for Typhoon Force, one for the AT AAR Force, one for Lightning Force, one for ISTAR Force, you assume might have aero engineers amongst their number.
As for Aircrew, I’m only aware of a single Sqn of reserve pilots who were probably ex RAF.
Sadly so mate, there are legal implications. From what I remember you had 12 months after leaving the platform, where you could resit a test to prove that you were safe and competent to do a servicing etc. After that you lost that right but maintained your engineering qualification. Trying to remember what a mate was saying about how long training took for ground crew on Chinooks, kind of depended if you were a noob straight out of training or had transferred from another platform.
This I feel would be the problem for the RAF ground trades on aircraft. As they would need time to prove that they can do the work competently. Which for ramping up a Squadron’s capability would be a problem. On something fairly basic like a Chinook it wouldn’t take that long, but on the F35 or the future GCAP it will.
I know the USAF have reservist engineers, so they must have gotten round the legal issue. It would be good to understand how they’ve done it.
Are people really going to volunteer to die for Chairman Starmer’s 🐹🦄🌈 WEF agenda? I’d sooner fight for Putin.
A couple of full squadrons of aircraft in reserve wouldn’t go amiss , we have pitifully low numbers across all the requirements , from high end fighters, to transport aircraft