TRAINING YOU’LL RECEIVE
Your career will start with the 10-week Basic Recruit Training Course (BRTC) at RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire. The course is designed to help you adjust to a military environment. As well as fitness and military training, you will also learn about the RAF lifestyle.
Following the Basic Recruit Training Course (BRTC), prospective Weapon Systems Operators and Air Operations (Control) Sergeants, known within the Service as Non-Commissioned Controllers, will complete the Direct Entrant Senior Non-Commissioned Officer (DE SNCO) Course at Airmen's Command Squadron (ACS), RAF Halton. The 8-week training programme will develop the students’ knowledge of leadership within the RAF and increase their understanding of their management responsibilities as SNCOs. The course includes Air Power academic study, Practical Leadership Exercises, an Appraisal Workshop, Interview Techniques and Fitness Development.
This is followed by a 5.2 week Military Aviation Ground School (MAGS) course also at RAFC Cranwell. You will be taught generic aircrew subjects such as meteorology, aircraft systems and basic survival skills before progressing to your specialist language training.
SPECIALIST TRAINING
As a Linguist, you will undergo 18 months of intensive language training at Chicksands in Bedfordshire or Shrivenham in Wiltshire before proceeding to an Airborne Linguist Training Course that will build on previous MAGS subjects, adding airborne specific exercises. You will then be posted to RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. Here you will complete a 4 month Technical Applied Language Course before proceeding to a 6 month Operational Conversion Course on the aircraft to which you have been assigned.