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81RAF REGIMENT PARTICIPATION IN OPERATIONCORPORATEGroup Captain Kingsley OliverKingsley Oliver served in the RAF Regiment from1947 until 1978. Command, staff and instructionalappointments at home included RAFC Cranwell,the RAF Regiment Depot, HQs Fighter and AirSupport Commands and MOD, and overseas inRAF Germany, NEAF, the Arabian Peninsula andFEAF. After leaving the Service he spent two yearsin Teheran managing BAe%u2019s Imperial Iranian AirForce Rapier Programme before becoming SeniorProject Manager for all overseas Rapier contracts at BAe Stevenage. Hehas written and been published on a variety of aspects of military andcivic history, including several works on the RAF Regiment.IntroductionRAF Regiment personnel in Operation CORPORATE accompaniedNos 1 and 18 Sqns; others were at the staging post on Ascension Islandand with the Rapier squadron which was tasked with the defence of theHarrier forward operating base in the Falklands. The role of theRegiment personnel with the two flying squadrons is beyond my remittoday, but I shall touch briefly on the tasks of the Regiment detachmenton Ascension before addressing my main theme which is the deploymentof No 63 Sqn RAF Regiment, with its eight Blindfire Rapier systemsfrom the UK to the Falklands from May until September 1982.The Staging PostThe limiting factors of fresh water, accommodation and cateringinevitably restricted the number of reinforcement personnel which couldbe stationed on Ascension Island. Although there was considered to be apotential risk of attack by Argentine special forces, dropped off from apassing merchant ship, only a tactical wing HQ and one flight of a UKbased field squadron %u2013 a total of thirty-nine RAF Regiment officers andairmen %u2013 could be deployed to provide a ground defence operations celland a quick reaction force for the airfield as a whole. Ground defenceplanning for the staging post was exacerbated by the absence of a JTPfor activation of the airfield, a lack of communications equipment for the