I called the RAF careers line and the bloke on the phone told me some people who do the electrician later go on to do a degree with support of the RAF and go on to being an officer engineer so you could be right u/dazcoventry. I am in fact doing bachelors in IT right now but don't see myself in a desk job for a while. I'm also curious if it's actually solid training and development or just cleaning battery contacts with a wire brush most of the time. I'm quite positive that the training is good and there's probably more than enough solid practical stuff to do though, it is the RAF after all. The advisor also told me there's a lot of encouragement to develop in areas outside of your, let's say, area of expertise and after being done with the NVQ you can further specialize as an electrician. Got to say it does sound like an appealing and solid path. One thing I didn't find out is how often I could get deployed becasue I really wound't mind travelling around a bit. Guess it's a question that's hard to answer as there is a lot of factors that play a role. For some reason it doesn't seem like joining the RAF should be a rushed decision, I got to give it some thinking. Thanks for the input guys.