Taking Flight: How the RAF Air Cadets bridged the digital divide with ChromeOS Flex

Editor's Note: Today’s post is by Dr. Jill Matterface, Education and Training Specialist for the Royal Air Force. Early on in her career with the Royal Air Force Air Cadets, Dr. Jill Matterface, Education and Training Specialist for the RAF, discovered that 27% of cadets come from disadvantaged areas in the UK. These cadets, and potentially many more, often cannot afford the technology they need to participate in Air Cadet training. As part of the goal of the RAF to remove digital gaps, the RAF deployed ChromeOS Flex with new and older devices. Royal Air Force Cadets is the youth training and enrichment program from the Royal Air Force, with 1,000 local squadrons of 30-50 children and young adults aged 12 to 20.

The digital divide in many of our communities resulted in a lot of potential Air Cadets self-excluding from our program. This is often silent as many disadvantaged families will opt out because of lack of resources and anticipated costs, and unfortunately our individual squadrons were not able to bridge this divide by buying new devices.

This translated into a glaring technology gap.

Our technology was begged and borrowed, or it was cadets bringing their own if possible, but access was very inconsistent. Some kids were attempting to work on their phones, if they had them, so there was a real inequity there, and a lot of embarrassment for not having the right piece of kit.

Closing digital gaps with more computing devices for Air Cadets

Digital literacy has become a crucial life skill, and certainly in today’s modern military, where new recruits must have good grounding in using common digital productivity and collaboration tools. Not surprisingly, technology is an increasingly important part of Air Cadet training. Air Cadet coursework is delivered online, and the Air Cadets have a large STEM program that involves robotics and coding.

Obviously, some of this would be very hard to accomplish without the proper device to work on. One option for closing the digital equity gap was to buy devices like laptops. But our very limited budgets could not cover the cost. Even just fulfilling our initial goal of buying a few computers per unit was an insufficient number in reality.

Closing budget gaps with ChromeOS Flex

The Air Cadets technology team learned about Google solutions and ChromeOS in 2023, when the RAF adopted Google Classroom to deliver BTEC exams and assessments for Air Cadets. While preparing to launch Classroom, the ICT team discovered ChromeOS Flex and how it could help the Air Cadets program not only save money, but also improve sustainability, since older devices could be reused instead of being disposed of.

In addition, our technology leaders found that they could refresh outdated or new PCs or Macs as cloud-based ChromeOS devices. The refreshed devices are secure and easy to manage, and can be deployed with speed and scale.

That was our ‘aha’ moment. ChromeOS Flex was a solution that was both financially and environmentally sustainable, so at this point we realized that this was the route we would take.

We also realized that “new” ChromeOS devices could be acquired in a number of ways. Squadrons organized recycling drives that brought in more devices from their communities, and also from business partners like defense contractor Serco, which donates laptop computers to the Air Cadets program every quarter.

Fast device transformation and easy management

When the donated devices were assembled and ready to be converted to ChromeOS Flex devices, the Air Cadets had to manage the deployment. Fortunately, it was easier than the ICT team expected: They were able to deploy the devices at speed and at scale with the expertise of Google partner C-Learning. They supported the deployment and guided the RAF through Flexing and enrolling the devices.

We put a timer on at one point, and it took our ICT team about eight minutes to load ChromeOS Flex on each device. As of late 2024, Air Cadet squadrons are using over 1,500 ChromeOS devices including ChromeOS Flex devices and donated and purchased Chromebooks. We plan to expand the program to 3,000 devices.

Any concerns about management of so many devices were quickly erased as the Air Cadet program’s technology team quickly adopted the Google Admin console. We created a single sign-on, which allows the cadets to pick up any device and sign into their own settings. The digital team has found the console incredibly simple to use. With donated old and new devices, the Air Cadets now have a level playing field for all participants in terms of digital inclusion.

For the cadets, it feels great to be invested in. We’ve seen firsthand how digital access can bolster their self-esteem. But we’ve also brought the issue of digital poverty to the forefront. Not everyone is lucky enough to afford a laptop or a tablet for their children.

Faced with the need to provide a digitally inclusive program for the young adults in our squadrons, Air Cadets chose ChromeOS Flex to launch secure and easy-to-manage devices.