Talk:Ranks of the cadet forces of the United Kingdom

Comparing ranks
There are major issues with this page. The apparent gradings of "CDT 1", "CDT 2", "CDT 3" etc are not in any regulation. Also the categorisation of them as "junior cadets", "senior cadets" and "command cadets" is incorrect and is not in any regulation. The terms "junior" and "senior" cadets have specific meanings, at least in the ACF. The correct categories would be "cadet", "junior NCO" (LCpl and Cpl) and "Senior NCO" (Sgt to RSM). Technically, Under officer is no longer a rank in the ACF although some counties may have one. Praetorian65 (talk) 14:34, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Cadet Under officers
The CCF RAF Section certainly had Cadet Under Officers when I was in it. Although admittedly that was nearly forty years ago (I left in 1986). We had a CUO and a CWO. The Army Section also had Cadet Lance Sergeants (same rank insignia as a sergeant) and Cadet Company Quartermaster Sergeants (same rank insignia as a staff sergeant). Cadet Lance Corporals in the RAF Section were called Cadet Junior Corporals (this changed when the RAF Regiment introduced the rank of L/Cpl). Cadet CPOs in the RN Section were called Cadet Coxswains and the RN Section didn't have Cadet Warrant Officers. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:20, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Comparing ranks
This cadet rank equivalency table is a complete fantasy, and I speak as someone who was an Army Cadet for five years, a Army Reservist for three years and a Regular British Army officer for 16 years.

This cadet rank equivalency table looks like it was drawn up by a cadet in the SCC/RMC with a chip on his/her shoulder about the low ranks. The SCC/RMC has no ranks above PO/Sgt, but that doesn’t magically make then the equivalent of a Cadet RSM. To put a bit of perspective on it, you can have a PO in a unit of ~20 cadets. A Cadet CSM will be one cadet in a company of ~150 cadets and a Cadet RSM will be one cadet out of a unit of 700+ cadets.

What’s more these “CDT1” to “CDT9” levels are not a real thing, and have just been made up by authors of this article, who are presumably cadets and have modelled them on NATO rank codes. I’ve never seen them anywhere else, ever!

There is no evidence whatsoever to support the equivalency table as it stands, though if you were to make a sensible inference (clearly this is well below the evidential threshold expected by Wikipedia) there are two pieces of evidence that suggest it could be very different - the Armed Forces Act (referencing Queen’s Regulations, see below) and CCF Regulations (see below). Whilst the latter provides an equivalency table for the CCF, there is no equivalency for the other cadet forces.

Given the evidence that Wikipedia normally expects, it is very disappointing that this nonsense article has been allowed.

I'm trying to edit, but can't figure it out. If you disagree with me position, please could you provide evidence? -- 2a02:c7f:f835:6200:f497:79f0:3a86:8fd4 14:04, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

This page is a mess, and blatantly incorrect.
This page seems to change entirely in structure every few months, seemingly by someone wanting to claim that their cadet force's ranks are the highest.

The reality is, the ranks of all the cadet forces at once cannot be compared.

There are compatibility between some:


 * The ATC and ACF use a very similar training system as they are both heavily involved with the MOD, which means their ranks are roughly equivalent
 * The branches of the CCF are directly equivalent, of course
 * The SCC and RMC ranks are directly equivalent, though not in the way the article currently says it is

However, you cannot really and should not compare between these. Each of these 3 have very different training programmes, meaning what needs to be done to achieve a rank differs greatly. This leaves it entirely up to the editors that regularly change this page to determine through their personal opinion what rank is equivalent to what, rather than using sources which is what Wikipedia requires.

Personally, I would say this article should not exist at all as the comparisons between cadet force ranks are pointless and very rarely happen outside of this Wikipedia page.

If however the information on this page is somehow useful to someone, I would say the current big table should be split into smaller tables where we can directly compare ranks where there is an explicit source that determines equivalency (for instance SCC/RMC ranks). I believe the article actually looked like this several months ago.

The current state of this articles is biased and uninformative. It in no way meets Wikipedia's standards.

31.54.148.202 (talk) 12:00, 11 April 2022 (UTC)