Top girls - the women patrolling the sky for the RAF

Not just anybody can make it as a fighter pilot. You need to be fitter and more robust than a Formula 1 driver to be able to deal with extreme g-forces. You need to cope with doing several things at once. You need to have fast responses. Plus the secret ingredient - natural aptitude.
To mere civilians, fast jet pilots are the stuff of movies - glamorised by Tom Cruise in Eighties movie Top Gun.

So when pictures emerged this week of Flight Lieutenant Helen Seymour exiting her Typhoon jet with a smile - having just landed in Italy after patrolling the no-fly zone in Libya - there was a flutter of excitement.

She is reported to be the first female Typhoon pilot - the most modern of the RAF's fast jets - involved in a combat mission and one of just 10 women currently flying either Typhoons or Tornados.

And, like Flt Lt Julie Gibson who was the RAF's first operational female pilot in 1990, Flt Lt Kirsty Moore who became the RAF's first woman on the Red Arrows team in 2009 and Flt Lt Juliette Fleming who is one half of the first all-female Tornado crew with her weapons systems officer, Squadron Leader Nikki Thomas, Seymour's "first" has made us stand to attention.

But her fellow pilots won't have batted an eyelid.

"Although we may find it fascinating that women are flying fast jets, it's not an issue for them," says Sean Rayment, author of Bomb Hunters.
"Some of the female pilots may feel it would be great if there were more of them but first and foremost it is about their individual ability and gender is secondary to that."

According to the MoD it takes at least two years to train as a fast jet pilot, with additional training to get recruits "combat ready". Once qualified a flight lieutenant can be paid between £37,170 and £44,205.

"It is probably fair to say that within the RAF the training to be a fast jet pilot is the most arduous," says Rayment. "The reason that most people would fail is because they get maxed out having to think about so many things at once. You have to be able to fly and fight at the same time. Women are very good at multitasking so you can see why they would be adept at this."

While women are still "excluded from ground combat units where the primary role is to close with and kill the enemy" (which precludes them from a role in the RAF Regiment, which is a ground force) air-to-air combat and ground attacks are very much a man's or a woman's job.

There is currently a 70-strong fleet of Typhoons and 120 Tornados in the RAF. Across the armed forces nine per cent of personnel are women, but fewer than a third of those serve in combat roles - so the five per cent of fast jets flown by women is actually quite impressive.

"The armed forces have always been looked upon as a male environment but in Afghanistan there are women have faced the same risks as men and women have been killed," says Rayment. "There are always going to be one or two people who think women can't be fast jet pilots just because they are women, but the vast majority would feel that the most important thing is their ability to do the job."