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While working with the Australian Defence Force as a civilian financial and management specialist in the Royal Australian Air Force I attended lots of conferences for senior staff. At one I encountered a very serious and heated discussion going on between a small group of senior uniform staff and senior civilian staff. It was all over AERs, one side saying they were due in four weeks and the other claiming they were all due six weeks back. After a minute or so I managed to get them to be quite and pointed out that the uniform people were referring to Airmen's Evaluation Reports while the civilians were talking about Additional Estimate Returns - neither group knew about the other's meaning for AER. It was fun to watch the fight at first, but only for a little while, which is why I sorted it out for them. I suspect I may have been one of the few civilians who knew about the RAAF AER as I helped the Base Commander, my immediate boss, complete the ones for the HQ RAAF staff in our office.