Exercise Vanguard Fury, Trent Wing's 2023 annual Fieldcraft Camp took place during the halfterm holiday at the Stanford Training Area (STANTA) in East Anglia. It is the first camp since 2019 to run within the wing and ran parallel to the Fieldcraft Instructors Course Assessment exercise.
The aim of the exercise was to cover the majority of the RAFAC Fieldcraft training syallabus, with the cadets, gaining a number of new skills and knoweldge, consolidating their learning with a series of exercises to test their abilities along the way. This was, for many their first full camp, of any type within the RAF Air Cadets and is not the easiest of camps, challenging the cadets throughout.
Whilst there are the tactics to learn there were also the challneges of living in the field environment. Sleeping in improvised shelters or even outside is not to everyone's liking, but all taking part completed it with ease, learning how to construct their shelters and utlising them to best effect.
It was also a chance for the cadets to experience Operational Ration Packs, which sometimes comes with a bit of aprehension, but they were met with full approval by all. The cadets embraced the challenges well, performing beyond expectation and completed the exercises well, demonstrating that they could put their learning into practice.
It was also chance for the potential Fieldcraft Instructors to put theory into practice and be assessed in the field to ensure they have the right knowledge, skills and abilities to qualify as Fieldcraft Instructors, which we are now pleased to confirm that all 5 have obtained their FCI qulification, allowing greater delivery of Fieldcraft Training across the Wing.
The exercise was a great success, with plans already underway for 2024!
