Akrotiri

[fred737]

It seems that the Rock Ape CinC has changed the life style for the worse. Gone are KD and comfortable desert boots. The wannabe pongo (how else can you describe him) has decreed that as the station is an operational base actively taking part in real wars, everybody has to wear the camoflage pongo kit. (What was the status of the station before his arrival when Iraq and Afghanistan before his arrival were in full swing?

[Jayand]

You will probably find it is a money saving measure, and anyway if you are posted to Akrotiri and not some dusty OOA then who cares what they make you wear, just enjoy it!

[3 bladed beast]

Whilst this may appear a trivial move, I for one am quite happy for this IF it actually improves the focus of RAF Akrotiri.

For far too long, this has been a holiday base, with limited opening hours and considering it is our major staging post for recent and ongoing Operations, this has been unacceptable.

[Jayand]

I think you may have hit the nail cleanly on the head there, with all the cuts and budget defecits the hierachy probably want to ensure Akrotiri is seen as an Operational base and therefore kept out of any firing line from the bean counters/basing reviews.
Enjoy it because there arent many nice postings left regardless of what you have to wear.

[D-IFF_ident]

Well if nothing else, the status of the station before his arrival was definitely the status before his arrival. :cool:

[Clockwork Mouse]

Seems very sensible. The bloke is clearly absorbing some common sense and sound judgement from the Pongos.

[The Gorilla]

Matthew Paris in the Times today suggests that it is ludicrous for us to have people in nice Hotac in Italy when they could live in tents in Akrotiri!! Perhaps he has the ear of call me Dave??

[BEagle]

Is that 'pongo camouflage' as in Clockwork Squaddie 95, or perhaps the latest fashion in desert pyjamas?

No doubt worn with that ridiculously working class piece of headwear beloved of French onion-johnnies?

[rock34]

So your biggest gripe is that you have to wear CS95? :{

Lets hope we don't halve the fast jet fleet, overstretch the SH, chop the kipper fleet and have to make loads of people redundant whilst continuing to fight two wars etc etc.




Oh...........

[99luftballon]

I agree with 3BB, if this helps the guys at Akrotiri accept that they need to focus to support those on Ops, then it must be a good thing.

If there is a financial saving from no longer having to produce costumes from 'It Ain't Alf Hot Mum' it couldn't have come at a better time.

And if the Cold War dinosaurs don't like it, then it must be progress!

[Roadster280]

Pongo camouflage? I didn't realise the RAF had a different pattern. I thought it was all the same. Other than the ridiculous "ROYAL AIR FORCE" tags on the shirts, of course.

No doubt worn with that ridiculously working class piece of headwear beloved of French onion-johnnies?

Well it's that or helmets. Unless of course you want to look like a bus inspector? A tad more working class, n'est ce pas?

http://www.friendsoforis.com/img/uploaded/image5548.jpg

[Skeleton]

Just what Akrotiri deserved. Been there a few times in my role as Ops asst (were not clerks Kemble01) it was always made clear we were in the way (:ugh::ugh:

[Shack37]

I agree with 3BB, if this helps the guys at Akrotiri accept that they need to focus to support those on Ops, then it must be a good thing.


Are you (and 3BB) suggesting that the guys at Akrotiri were not previously focussed on supporting ongoing operations? If the answer is yes please explain how a change of dress code will affect this attitude.

[mrmrsmith2]

A plane too land in Akrotiri after 1pm, but we've been working since 7am and finish at 1pm sharp !, there would need to be a war or two going on.. and no one told us about it, wee would know............... and wee don't oh oh soo true...............

[Wander00]

And Matthew Parris has what military experience?

[Jumping_Jack]

I too support the said 2 star Rock. I have worked directly for him and found him to be easily the best 2 star I have worked for. He simply isn't the kind to cause sh1t just cos he can (a certain 2 star in Brussels however....:rolleyes:)

[nobby879]

Nicely put Just this once.....
So we seem to have issues with the perception of Akrotiri....Wonder how long it has been since those who are keen to bad mouth the stn and it's personnel have been there??? Every stn has it's own way of doing things, Akrotiri is no different. However, it's as operationally focussed as it can be and those stationed there are to use a management speak phrase "forward leaning" to the point of falling over (not for the reasons I'm sure some comedian will come up with). As for wearing CS95D, get over it....it's a uniform and we wear uniform all the time. This is the first time I have felt the need to go to print but for goodness sake, if you are in Cyprus make the most of it...there are precious few good deals left, this is one of them

[Chinny Crewman]

Gorilla; Parris said no such thing! I thought his article was quite thought provoking actually.


These buffoons don’t deserve our salutes
Matthew Parris

June 25 2011 12:01AM

"We messed up in Iraq and Afghanistan; we’re struggling in Libya. Are our military leaders actually any good?
here was a time when people knew the rules: the generals kept out of politics. If they saw difficulties in carrying policy into action they could take their concerns straight to their political masters, but always in private. This unspoken covenant, part of the underpinning of any civilian-led democracy, has often come under pressure, and — yes — I do know about the Duke of Wellington; but mostly it has held.
Today it is fraying. Interventions this week by Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant, who told MPs that the RAF was “running hot” and might struggle if the Libyan intervention continues beyond September, and last week by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, who suggested that the conflict might prove unsustainable for much longer, would be outrageous even if they were accurate, which they are not. Both men should be disciplined. But because the Tories in Opposition rushed in so unseemly a way to associate themselves with General Sir Richard Dannatt after he too broke the rules, ministers are now hoist with their own petard.
The reasons for this growing incontinence among our top brass are complex. When public support for war in Iraq then Afghanistan was wavering, military chiefs, preferably in uniform, were not discouraged from public statements of support for Britain’s war aims. Few worried at the time about the implicit consequence of the news media developing an appetite for hearing military chiefs’ views: that military chiefs would develop an appetite for offering them.
There’s a fashion across our whole culture (of which our freedom of information debacle is part) that uncritically admires whistle-blowing and “speaking out”. A military man who unburdens himself publicly of his worries about equipment or manpower is thought to be doing us all a favour. The language of duty — a “duty” to speak out about how “dangerously thin” our military are now stretched — flows easily from the pen and is guaranteed a table-thumping response. That this could also be described as lobbying for more money is overlooked.
Behind this, too, is a conflict as old as Britain’s Armed Forces themselves: competition for resources between the three services. When the Government is curbing or cutting back, this competition grows bitter. The resulting noise can confuse a public that fails to understand that this is less about national defence than an internal squabble between the Army, Navy and Air Force.
It is hard for commentators and analysts who need to know about defence to avoid developing a relationship with their military sources. Nobody who thinks war is just silly becomes a war reporter; nobody who finds arms technology boring is likely to educate himself into second-guessing the Ministry of Defence. The modern practice of embedding journalists with troops adds to the pressure to admire the operation. Our journalists are volunteers: we lack conscripts such as Siegfried Sassoon to provide accounts like Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, a story not just of brutality but futility.
In my experience our former Ambassador in Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, is spot on in his book Cables from Kabul to observe that we have now a generation of politicians (and, I could add, journalists and voters) who have no personal experience of military service and have lost the deep scepticism with which the ordinary British used to view the top brass.
Samuel Johnson’s observation that “every man thinks the less of himself for not having been a soldier” is, I can tell you, nowhere truer than of modern MPs, many of whom regard anyone who has ever cleaned a rifle with a kind of uncomprehending awe.
It’s time we started to ask whether the leadership of Britain’s Armed Forces is actually any good. We messed up our contribution in Iraq; we got bogged down in Afghanistan; and now we’re treading water in Libya. How dare the Air Chief Marshal complain about the RAF having to carry on past September. Why, pray? Because we and our allies don’t seem able to do the job.
I doubted the wisdom of going into Libya, but we’re there now and obviously we must kill or capture Gaddafi. We’re the fourth largest military power in the world; what would we do if we had a serious adversary to contend with? Complaining at the strain of a long war is like a football striker complaining about the stress of extra time. So score, dammit! We need an aircraft carrier off the coast of Libya? My eye. What do they think is the point of our huge and costly bases at RAF Akrotiri, and Dhekelia, in Cyprus — holiday camps for military R & R?
I went to Basra for The Times near the beginning of our military occupation of that town. The place was a stinking mess and we were not in any meaningful sense taking charge. I wrote as much — an ignorable squeak amid the barrage of media adulation for a British effort that was apparently showing the Yanks how to do things.
When we decided to take control of Helmand province I described for this paper the terrain I’d flown over, and (on the basis of only a week’s visit to Afghanistan) doubted we were capable — again in any meaningful sense — of occupying the place. There must have been people in the Armed Forces saying the same who, unlike me, knew what they were talking about. Yet we blundered in and blundered on.
The last time we scored anything approaching a major military victory was in the Falklands, and that was against a tottering country led by a drunken despot. Even then some of our military command thought it couldn’t be done. It took a politician, Margaret Thatcher, to overrule them.
Any journalist like me who has spent time close to troops in arenas of conflict knows that all the clichés about courage and professionalism are true: innumerable capable people at every level, top to bottom, do splendid stuff and do it well. There is excellence everywhere, even at the top. Yet the suspicion grows (it cannot be in me alone) that, as a collective, things are not coming together. Incoherence and unwisdom are not found out. The best, and the best thinking, do not always win. Vast mistakes are made and never reconsidered.
We spend on our Armed Forces a greater proportion of our national wealth than most allies. The numerical ratio between our back-office support and our fighting men is a joke.
Our Ministry of Defence — inexplicably stuffed with senior officers (as if anyone would suggest having hospital consultants run the Department of Health) — is dysfunctional. Financial control has run amok. Advice offered to ministers is consistently wrong.
In any other area of government the word we would use of a prohibitively expensive machine that didn’t deliver success would be “failure”. But when it comes to defence only success is ever attributed to the calibre of those who bring it; failure is never their fault, never a matter for shame, never a subject for even curiosity or inquiry, never thought to have any linkage to leadership. And these bemedalled buffoons have the cheek to deliver public lectures to their political masters. It’s time to call their bluff."

[Cows getting bigger]

OK, having done a quick 'Googling', I hope I'm not mistaken in that one G Stacey is CBF. If this is the case, he is probably the finest, most pragmatic officer I ever served under in my time in the RAF.

PS. I'm not a Rock.

[nobby879]

Cows getting bigger....he certainly is that chap you googled to get your facts before posting! Could not comment on finest officer bit but from what I've seen and heard so far.....top bloke

[Finningley Boy]

I've just finished reading Mr Parris' comments. Is he some kind of politician's Sharkey or something? Fourth largest Defence Budget does not equal fourth largest Military Force. And I was always under the opinion that it was the then 1st Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, who persuaded Margaret Thatcher to send the task force to the Falklands, not the other way round.:confused:

FB:)

[777fly]

Please excuse my ignorance. I have not seen any mention of Akrotiri being used as an asset in the current Libyan campaign. Matthew Parris seems to think that it makes more sense than Harrier/Carrier. Seems to me that both assets are being wasted. Please advise....my taxes are being burned.

[Willard Whyte]

Stuff there fighting the mad Colonel. 'Nuff said.

[AGS Man]

Ok, things are a lot different now but when I did my tour at Akrotiri 85-88 there were some pretty strange uniform rules then. One was (in winter) that during exercises or ops you would wear your normal DPM with a light blue shirt underneath. During another exercise the Staish decreed that everybody would Cam up, what a site he made with a cammed up face and the effect spoilt by his scrambled egg on his hat! At that time I worked on the Lox plant and it certainly took some time explaining that wearing oil based cam cream could lead to a big smoking hole in the middle of the base. Ahh happy days.

[Pontius Navigator]

Ok, things are a lot different now but when I did my tour at Akrotiri 85-88 there were some pretty strange uniform rules then. One was (in winter) that during exercises or ops you would wear your normal DPM with a light blue shirt underneath.

To put that in context:

At Coningsby, same time, I was at a brief and singled out as the only one wearing the proper kit. I can't remember at the time but I confessed to the staish later that I too had some variation.

As mentioned, blue shirts were common as the green shirts were uncomfortable and unpopular. I think OC Ops won on sartorial grounds and the biggest variation with the staishes aprobation (before he was later sacked for certain indiscretions). He wore an aircrew polo shirt with a KD shirt on top. Very poofy,(but that was not the indiscretion, (quite the reverse in fact).

[Wander00]

As an accountancy stude with the Army at Worthy Down in about 88 or 89 there was a call out at about 9pm one Sunday (Turned out some idiot had left a bag where it should not have been). Quick as a flash I was into DPM and turnd up at the army version of GDCC. I turned out to be the only guy or girl in anything like unform, so they made me (RAF sqn ldr) the Ground Defence Commander for the night!

[AGS Man]

Agree with you about the green shirts Pontius. Most of us wore the lightweight DPM top under the standard DPM instead of light blue shirts

[TEEEJ]

777fly wrote

Please excuse my ignorance. I have not seen any mention of Akrotiri being used as an asset in the current Libyan campaign.

RAF Akrotiri is being utilised, but not for offensive operations.

Akrotiri not used launch offensive strikes on Libya (http://famagusta-gazette.com/akrotiri-not-used-launch-offensive-strikes-on-libya-p11590-69.htm)

YouTube - ‪'Eyes in the sky' deployed as NATO monitors Libyan crisis 07.03.11‬‏

YouTube - ‪RAF Sentinel Patrol over Libya‬‏

TJ

[dazjs]

The sight of an old fat CT in KD with big sweaty armpits and his gut hanging out of the bottom of his shirt, looking like an overweight geriatric Steve Urwin has now gone. That was the memeroy I have of AKT in 94 on APC. It looks a tad more proffesional nowadays.

[Top West 50]

We used to wear blue shirts with DPM trousers when at AFCENT/AAFCE in the early eighties. An American colleague remarked one day "do you realise just how high on the hill you have to be for that camouflage to be effective!"

[641st]

Should have been there in July '74....

[Monkey Madness]

As an AATC who has been to Akrotiri on det twice completed a posting there over the period of Op TELIC, I take exception to people saying it's a holiday camp where everyone is done by 1.

Whilst I appreciate that Cyprus has its sunny advantages, they all work their backsides off to keep the airfield operational. Lack of augmentation from the UK, (as its manned for peacetime ops only) does mean that opening hours are sometime limited. However, like everyone else on ops, when the button is pushed, they all turn out and put the effort in.

I'll put the soap box away now.

MM

[SOSL]

Well said Monkey. For a long time now Akrotiri has provided the service expected from a MOB with the resources of a FOB.

[SAMXXV]

In 1981 at RAF Wildenrath, Graham Stacey was a Plt Off/Fg Off peer of mine. He was a great, fun loving guy & took (in good humour) an inordinate amount of flak in the mess for his unfortunately twisted mouth. I was amazed (but not surprised) today to see that after 30 odd years he has reached AVM rank. That is the close knit Rock Apes for you.

I, Graham & several others drove down to the "Rhine in Flames" at Koblenz one night & I still have the pictures - which he may want emailed (? Graham). Because of his facial disability & his ability to ignore it he will rise to higher things. Traditionally, the RAF only affords VERY senior rank to aircrew but this has to change.

Good on you Graham.

[Blacksheep]

...who have no personal experience of military service and have lost the deep scepticism with which the ordinary British used to view the top brass.Deep scepticism was it? Ho-Ho! That's putting it politely... :E

[Willard Whyte]

I think the AT fleet would have been a little more sympathetic, in the past, to the personnel issues in LCRA had we not had to crew in a little before midnight, fly into the dawn, and arrive at a time convenient to those at the far end.

[Runaway Gun]

A time convenient? To who? The passengers perhaps? Or available handling slots back in the UK?

[Willard Whyte]

At the end of a long flight I'd rather be met by tired movers, ops personnel etc than be on a flight where the crew had to put up with a ludicrous crew duty 'day'. Sometimes those days are unavoidable, with LCRA transits they became a norm.

[Grabbers]

Oooh, this should be fun. I heart mover-bashing thread drift. ;)

[Runaway Gun]

My point is that the available slots back at 'home' were very limited. They tended to be 'booked out' early with the best times prioritised to civilian contracted flights. Being content with 'tired' mover crews simply isn't the issue - there are a limited number of teams (used to be two back in my day) which meant we couldn't come home early, and the flights were organised around such limitations.

There - I said something positive about 'those' guys :ok: