Categories
Politics

Join The Forces Of Niceness

English: An Royal Air Force Panavia Tornado GR...
Gotta loada bombs 'ere. Where'd ya wannit Guv?

There’s an advert running on one of the British TV channels for the RAF Reserve, which is an organisation you join if you want to fly fighter jets but they won’t let you. According to the little drama, you do at least get to find things for the planes. The reservist selects something with a mouse, an RAF Tornado comes and blows it up. You might easily get the impression he was actually targeting an air strike there, but I’m pretty positive they don’t leave that to the part-timers.

Then he says “One target destroyed. Zero casualties. My proudest day ever.” Zero casualties and proud – as if you are actually encouraged to let enemy combatants get away. How sporting.

Well, perhaps if you’re a reservist you are only asked to target the things, while the people-targeting is left to the professionals. Though that does sound tricky to arrange in the heat of battle. No on balance, I think this is more likely to be one of those… What’s the term again? Those… Oh yes. Lies.

Subtly couched of course. What they’re trying to say here is that there are plenty jobs in today’s army for wimpy middle-class people. It’s nice clean combat at a computer desk, pretty much like your real job. You don’t have to kill or maim or destroy any people at all. They just can’t say that out loud, for fear of putting proper soldiers off.

One reply on “Join The Forces Of Niceness”

I don’t know about the RAF’s system, but the USAF’s Reservists do, in fact, fly planes, handle signal/intel support, and yes, serve as Air Battle Managers. It is not inconceivable for the British to have similar positions for theirs.

…not so sure about the “zero casualties” thing. Unless they means “civilian casualties”?

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: