According to the Sunday Telegraph half of Army gunships in combat area are grounded.

[MReyn24050]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/11/nmilitary511.xml
The article states "Half of Army gunships supporting British troops in Afghanistan and Irag were grounded this summer, new Government figures reveal. A third of the Chinook transport helicopters on operations were also withdrawn from service as they were found not 'fit for purpose' .
I am not in a position to confirm if there is any truth in this report. However, I do find it rather alarming. I was under the impression that "lean", which must be in full swing now, was going to improve the availability of aircraft at first line. However, I also know that when I retired last year that the availability of spares was a major problem, no doubt that this remains to be the case.

[Two's in]

MReyn24050,

MoD will tell you spares are not a problem for Apache, but that's only because of an alarming number of "Christmas Trees" in an air-conditioned Shropshire hangar. Those would be zero-hour Christmas Trees to boot.

[MReyn24050]

Two's in.
I know exactly what you mean,nothing changes. Why cannot the powers to be realise just what an extra burden is placed on the maintainers by having to cannibalise for the sake of spending a little more money on providing the correct scale of spares? Way back in the late 70s when the first Lynx were deployed to NI an extra aircraft was deployed as theatre reserve unfortunately it could not be considered as a unit aircraft for tasking so it remained in the corner of the hanger and was ultimately used for spares.In December the boys decorated it with Christmas decorations and during a hangar inspection the CO wanted to know why it was decorated in such a fashion to which the reply was "Well Sir,it is the Unit's Christmas Tree". He was less than pleased.

[Doctor Cruces]

In all my service, the term "lean" invariably ment doing more with less.

Promises of trimming the tail and leaving the teeth were complete bolleaux as everyone other than CDS and politicos know, you can't do the former without having severe repercussions on the latter.

Don't know why they still think we will believe any of their cr*p and why they can't be honest and say " sorry chaps, you're all screwed because there isn't going to be the money to keep your kit in a fit state (that's if you have the kit in the first place) or you safe. Sorry, but that's it".

Covenant, don't make me laugh.

Doc C:(:(

[serf]

Also mentioned Army Sea Kings...............and the best serviceability was Gazelle!

[ericferret]

Go back to 1976 Gazelle XW911 was positioned to Long Kesh as a christmas tree for the 660 squadron detachment. It was then shifted to Aldergrove to be rebuilt.
Everytime they put a major component in it was taken out again.

So nothing changes.

Prior to that a squadron Gazelle was so badly christmas tree'd at Soest that it had to go to workshops for a rebuild, major embarrassment.

Lack of spares is nothing new.

When 660 returned to Germany at the end of their 1976 Ireland tour the outgoing squadron were waiting at Gutersloh and removed all the clutches from the Gazelles which returned to Soest by road.


A week later I was in Detmold and saw all of 661's Gazelles bar one u/s for clutches.
2 squadrons in the same regiment 2 serviceable Gazelles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If only the Russians had known!!!!!!!!!

At the time the Gazelle spares situation was so bad an illicit trade in Gazelle spares was instituted with the German police at Dusseldorf who were also suffering. Spares regularly transitted up and down the autobahn attached to crates of beer.

I believe the same situation existed in respect of the Alouette 2 between Air Gregory at Denham and Netheravon. All went well until a new Air Greg pilot was told to pick up some spares from the army. In ignorance he flew to Middle Wallop and asked where he collected the spares from. That was the end of that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Spinflight]

No doubting that Apache is a capable aircraft but surely double the number of Cobra Venoms would have suited our needs better... Then again maybe it would have resulted in more Xmas trees...

[South Bound]

And there we have another fairly meaningless statistical report. So what? What was the impact of having half available? How many were required, how many were delivered? How many times were troops on the ground unsupported because of this fact?

In my last period in theatre we had x aircraft to deliver x/2 lines. Half was what we had to achieve and we did. This surged on occasion and we met that too, but when we were achieving x/2 no-one cared (including the Units on the ground) and more importantly no-one gave us any priority for getting more spares into theatre as there were other theatre priorities to take into account. Given the supply chain and the x/2 constraint it was nearly impossible to generate any more BECAUSE IT WAS NOT REQUIRED TO DO SO!!!!!!!

[airborne_artist]

And there we have another fairly meaningless statistical report. So what? What was the impact of having half available? How many were required, how many were delivered? How many times were troops on the ground unsupported because of this fact?

But put it the other way about, SB - imagine this headline "Army ships twice as many Apaches as needed to [sandy/rocky place] as spares shortage bites."

Sure, the article lacked info, but you have to ask why so many are in theatre and not serviceable - the cost of sending them out is high enough alone.

[South Bound]

Yes, but A_A now you are getting into the intellectual bit that the article skips over in alarmist fashion.

Say an asset needed to guarantee 3 task lines daily, allow one on scheduled maint at any one time, one to be snagged (unscheduled) under investigation and maybe another one to allow for the 5 days (minimum) lead time for a critical spare to come into theatre. Suddenly I need 6 aircraft to generate 3 if being pragmatic and realistic about the limitations of operating so far away from Blighty.

Not getting into AH spares provisioning, that just exacerbates matters and is not limited to AH, but my annoyance is that the article makes no effort to suggest what might be reasonable and the impact of the headline statement.

[airborne_artist]

Agreed SB - you could write much the same headline about SAR (or any other shift type workers):

"80% of SAR personnel not at work at any one time" - because as we all know, you need five people to ensure one is on shift, allowing for sleep, leave etc.

[South Bound]

Agreed, shocking stat -so inefficient!!!

If you could get rid of all the nonsence scheduled maint, unscheduled maint, ac for flying training etc etc etc, we probably only need 10 Chinook, 6 AH, a coupla Merlin and a Puma (just so they don't sulk!). That would be another pointless article!

[whowhenwhy]

AA, 5 people to ensure that one is on shift - luxury! :ugh:

[Brakes...beer]

Whowhenwhy,

nothing wasteful about that. Airlines operate on the same ratio: 5 crews/aircraft in shorthaul (more like 7-8 in longhaul). Bit of a simplification but it boils down to: three 8-hr shifts/day, one crew on a day off, one on leave.