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Whats 'Tactical' About TCW These Days?

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IMissLocking

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recently had a visit to stalagluft 90 in N Yorks and was amazed by the amount of people now on TCW. The thing is, why is there so many people there when the majority of what they do is bigging themselves up in KAF? The last time they had a real deployment was Minhad. The siggies do the dangerous stuff in Afghan.

Why are they keeping hold of so many posts at KAF? Surely the point about being tactical is that they go in, establish the comms & then get out as NFU staff could do the work. It amazed me that they stayed at Al Udeid for so many years, which was a fixed installation.

Should they be rebranded as Forward Comms Wing? There's nowt tactical about what they do apart from the internal mickey mouse exercises that they run themselves.
 
Don't know where you got the info about them only doing internal exercises. They support a lot of the major ones that are run.

I agree about them holding on to the posts at KAF etc, most of them should be NFU - especially now that the dets are 4 months.
 
I'm sure some of the posts at KAF went NFU for a short while, that was the talk when I was last with the Mighty 90 a few years ago.

They quickly went back to TCW slots though, I'm not sure why though.

I think it's more a case of justification for the Wing, if they only came in for six months then bugged out leaving NFU to work the slots, they would all be sitting around doing nothing now as we havent created any new bases in a long time, everything's established now.
 
This was brought up today in a debate we had about the good and bad points of a possible joint defense force. According to our senior management, 90SU is seen as the PREMIER signals unit in the Tri service environment. We have several taskings in place for support to exercises all around the world for the next few months. We must be doing a good job if we keep getting asked to support everything.
 
techie_tubby said:
According to our senior management, we have several taskings in place for support to exercises all around the world for the next few months. We must be doing a good job if we keep volunteering to support everything.
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I've corrected your post so it reflects what actually happens smally.
 
Slightly Off Topic I was up that neck of the woods with the mighty Wokka a few weeks back, quite a lot of SLAM accom being built for so few people or atleast we didn't see many around camp. Any other assets moving in there to justify all the building work ?
 
docbombhead said:
Slightly Off Topic I was up that neck of the woods with the mighty Wokka a few weeks back, quite a lot of SLAM accom being built for so few people or atleast we didn't see many around camp. Any other assets moving in there to justify all the building work ?
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There's 900+ people on 90SU alone mate. On top of that there is 34 Sqn, 100 Sqn & 10 Field + station personnel. Until they started building the SLAM a shed load of us were at Linton & Deverill Barracks.
 
mad_collie said:
There's 900+ people on 90SU alone mate. On top of that there is 34 Sqn, 100 Sqn & 10 Field + station personnel. Until they started building the SLAM a shed load of us were at Linton & Deverill Barracks.
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Cheers for that MC put some light on it for me. Like I said it was like a ghost town while I was there, we were operating from 25 Sqn's old site and storing stuff over where TCW are now based, and saw very few people between the 2 sites. Might have to start driving round with my eyes open from now on:PDT_Xtremez_42:
 
Maybe they were all sat in their rooms tactically communicating via email?

Geeks!:PDT_Xtremez_26:
 
Hated my time on TCW. Good unit but i found it was run by a bunch of numpty officers and snco's. No offence. The Sac's and Cpls used to get fked over beyond all belief whilst the officers were never team players and were in it for themselves and always had it cushy on exercises while the real 'men' toughed it and roughed it. Hardly ever saw an officer get stuck in putting a tent up or helping. Infact after one exercise that lasted 5 weeks the lads wanted to go home and they were not allowed because the officer in charge only lived down the road and went home for the weekend! And the SNCO's used to run round like headless chickens, unsure of what to do and picking out the best SAC's to get all the dirty work done for them and the rest got left with either crypto guard or other mind numbingly boring jobs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
EXTCWTG3SAC said:
Hated my time on TCW. Good unit but i found it was run by a bunch of numpty officers and snco's. No offence. The Sac's and Cpls used to get fked over beyond all belief whilst the officers were never team players and were in it for themselves and always had it cushy on exercises while the real 'men' toughed it and roughed it. Hardly ever saw an officer get stuck in putting a tent up or helping. Infact after one exercise that lasted 5 weeks the lads wanted to go home and they were not allowed because the officer in charge only lived down the road and went home for the weekend! And the SNCO's used to run round like headless chickens, unsure of what to do and picking out the best SAC's to get all the dirty work done for them and the rest got left with either crypto guard or other mind numbingly boring jobs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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As much as this is a first post rant for you, I am inclined to agree with you on most points.

I did a full tour with the Mighty 90, across all the Sqn's, and I will back you up with saying that the Officers were generally inept, and in it for their own progression, and a handful of the SNEC's were spineless chaps.

The good SNEC's were grizzled "I did the Wing when it was with the Red Hand" types, and were top blokes, we would do as they said, and would follow them all the way, they knew what they were talking about.
There was also a handful of Cpl's who had been here before, and knew their stuff, but towards the end of my tour, we got a lot of people, of all ranks that were just not interested in being there.

You'll have some good times on the Wing, and you'll do things / go places you wont get to do anywhere else, but as an SAC, you're best off just sticking with you're mates, and rolling with the sh!te that comes from above...

I will add though, that I did enjoy my time on the Wing, I learned a lot, about myself more than anything, and met my best mates there.
 
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Been there a couple of times recently and it's a bit of a clown circus.

OC90 brags about all the good work being done & always gives it a TCW slant, regardless of who does the work.

OC TCW shouts about how brilliant TCW are when in fact he's taking most of the plaudits for the work that is being done by RAID & 5 Sqn.

OC FGW plays a guitar.
 
IMissLocking said:
Been there a couple of times recently and it's a bit of a clown circus.

OC90 brags about all the good work being done & always gives it a TCW slant, regardless of who does the work.

OC TCW shouts about how brilliant TCW are when in fact he's taking most of the plaudits for the work that is being done by RAID & 5 Sqn.

OC FGW plays a guitar.
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Good / bad or working up to a "Duelling Banjo"?? - Squeel like a pig boy!
 
IMissLocking said:
Been there a couple of times recently and it's a bit of a clown circus.

OC90 takes the plaudits and brags about all the good work being done by 90SU, but because he was a TCW Sqn Cdr, always gives it a TCW slant, regardless of who does the work.

OC TCW likes to think that TCW are all SF heroes, loves playing rugby and shouts about how brilliant TCW are when in fact he's taking most of the plaudits for the work that is being done by RAID & 5 Sqn.

OC FGW plays a guitar.
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That post actually made me laugh out loud. I've corrected it for you as you had missed a couple of points.
 
The title for this thread is an interesting one, i am sure that i will be corrected but i don't think that TCW has deployed as a tactical unit since the invasion of Iraq? The jobs that it is doing in Afghan would normally be filled by normal DWR's (GRMS, HELPDESK etc). I belive that TCW keeps hold of the posts so that there is a certain amount of continuity within the job, might be a poor reason might not.

The reason that its not tactical at the moment is there is no real requirement for it, the country is not off starting wars here there and everywhere, so the need for a fast moving rapid deployment is nil.

I think that its important to remember that the whole idea of TCW was to deploy set up a facility and run it for a couple of months then leave and handover to NFU personnel to carry on the jobs...again i am sure that i will be corrected on this.

There is one point of note to the wider trade is DWR turn around times, at the moment Cpls and Sgt's are 5 and 7 years (the last list that i saw) if you are a Cpl or Sgt on the Wing then you will be doing at least 4months away every 16months.

If TCW was to pull out of Afghan there will be whole load more DWRs for everyone else....wonder how that might go down within the wider trade.
 
kev827 said:
If TCW was to pull out of Afghan there will be whole load more DWRs for everyone else....wonder how that might go down within the wider trade.
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I'll vote for that. Some people will do 22 and not see the wing, 1 ACC on HFP, and get their nice Monday to Friday jobs with a nice OOA to FI or Seeb every 4 years or so. Spread the love, why should the worst job in the rade get humped with the worst dets too (minus the sweeeeet op bonus of course).
 
I was under the impression that TCW hangs on to the majority of the Afghan posts in order to justify the manpower it has. If you were to hand over these posts to NFU pers then what would TCW do? Exercises, 5 Sqn and the aforementioned JK show?
 
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