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The Royal Navy’s manpower planning system represents a highly complex queue which aims to provide sufficient manpower to meet both operational and structural commitments. This queue is affected by many variables and therefore it is essential to understand the influence of these variables and also the interactions (if any) among the variables. Experimental design (ED) is a potent technique to accomplish the above objective. As real experimentation was impractical and infeasible, a computer‐based simulation was developed to model the system which needs to be studied. This paper illustrates how computer simulation and experimental design was applied to identify the key risk variables within the manpower planning system at the UK’s Royal Navy.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between leadership and gender in the UK’s Royal Navy (RN) to answer the research question “Do men and women lead in different ways?”.

The research collected factual data on personnel statistics and organisational structure in the RN. The primary research adopted a grounded theory approach using repertory grid and critical incident technique. The research design was to interview a snowball sample of 27 mid-ranking officers, equally split between men and women and drawn from the main branches in the RN.

There is a significant gender deficit in the RN officer cadre with no women senior-ranking RN officers currently in post. A model of RN leadership was developed from a content and statistical analysis of the primary data. This was broadly equivalent for both men and women, except in one regard: women are expected to manage the impact of their gender so that their self-presentation conforms to the prevailing androcentric norms. The analysis also identified the consequences of unreflective leadership for followers and developed the term “damagement” to conceptualise this.

The small-scale research design precluded any generalisable findings, but further research, if confirmatory, should make a substantive contribution to both the theoretical field of gender and leadership, and the practice of leadership in the RN.

These would relate the practice of leadership in the RN. Given further confirmatory research, the findings should inform the leadership selection, training and evaluation processes operated by the RN. It should also influence the Ministry of Defence’s policy on the wider deployment of women in the armed services, when the issue is next reviewed.

The research may have social implications for the wider acceptance of the valuable contribution that women can and should be making in the national armed services of the UK and beyond.

The research was primary. It has added value though both its contribution to the leadership and gender debate and also the conceptualisation of leadership in the armed services, particularly the RN. In addition, it developed a new concept, that of “damagement” that could be critical in the development of more effective leadership styles.

Two of the Types recently Adopted by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy

Rolls‐Royce Ltd. designs, develops and manufactures gas turbine engines for aircraft and marine industrial purposes and in 1971 the gas turbine business was reconstructed to continue independently of the motor car and other piston engine manufacture. The British Government is the sole shareholder, but the Company determines its own commercial policy.

Joint Ministry of Aviation/Royal Swedish Air Force Board experiments to assist in the evaluation of the Head‐Up Display concept have been completed at the Minerva Laboratories, Treforest. Using a fixed based simulator, pilots from the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and Royal Swedish Air Force were subjected to tests prepared and conducted by personnel from the Institute of Aviation Medicine, Farnborough and Saab at Linkoping, Sweden. The pilots selected for the experiments had little or no experience of using head‐up display equipment. After briefing, each pilot was subjected over a period of 21/2 days to tests of increasing complexity to determine the individual reactions to the differing forms of display symbols which are used in British and Swedish equipment.

The purpose of this paper is to present an insider ethnographic account of a series of social confrontations between two mutually opposed groups of officers that took place in an officers’ mess in a remote military garrison in the 1980s. The identity of one of these groups was expressed in a particular song that was sung frequently and noisily in the mess. The analysis of these incidents and their precursors provides an understanding of the social processes in which they were embedded, and the conclusions drawn are generalized into the wider context.

The paper is based on insider ethnography, using rich description to present the incidents and their background. Analysis is conducted using other research by the author on the organizational culture of Service officers and wider scholarship not specifically related to the Military.

The paper finds that in-groups and out-groups in joint Service populations do not necessarily run along traditional, Service, lines, and that cultural change in the groups concerned was associated with the rapid turnover of their members as they were replaced in the normal postings cycle. It demonstrates that a socially powerful shared cultural element can, if only temporarily, bring unity between rival groups. It also contributes to the scholarship on the power of song as a proclamation of group identity and the intensification of that identity.

The main strength of this paper is that it provides an insider’s view of a British military social group, which is extremely rare in the literature, describing social processes that connect to the wider scholarship on song, in-group and out-group behaviour, and cultural change.

AEM will be exhibiting in Hall 4, Stand G1. The exhibit will illustrate AEM's comprehensive range of accessory repair and overhaul services for electrical, hydraulic, avionic and safety equipment. Farnborough will also be used as the official launch of AEM's Boeing 737 Landing Gear Total Support Pro‐gramme, which encompasses a complete exchange and overhaul service. Copies of Aviation Accessory News will be available on the stand.

TWENTY‐ONE years devoted to the development of ejection seats, 24,000 seats built for more than forty nations and now one thousand lives saved—that is the proud record of the Martin‐Baker Aircraft Company. To coincide with these achievements, the following article describes the technical development of the range of seats—from the first swinging arm concept through the early manually‐operated seat to the rocket‐assisted completely automatic zero/zero ejection seats of today. From whatever standpoint Martin‐Baker's record is examined, the result is impressive. In terms of mechanical engineering, a series of ingenious features allied to robust design have resulted in ejection seats of unparalleled performance yet renowned for their simplicity and reliability. In terms of sales, this comparatively small firm has, in effect, conquered the world and won substantial export contracts—not least those for over 7,000 seats for the United States armed forces. In human terms, the company has won the grateful thanks of all those aircrew members—a long roll of highly‐skilled and dedicated young men whom some might call the cream of manhood—who but for Martin‐Baker ejection seats would have perished. Small wonder that the name Martin‐Baker has become synonymous with successful ejection.

Normalair‐Garrett Ltd., (Stand No. N31) part of the Westland plc Group of Yeovil, Somerset, is exhibiting a wide range of products which demonstrate the company's diverse capabilities in control systems and precision components for the aerospace industry.