Originally Posted by
Just This Once...
Probably because of the extra expense teaching soldiers about warships and teaching sailors about digging and bayonets.
If you take the RAF College Cranwell as an example you will find it has already combined with RAF officer and aircrew selection (for all services, in the latter case), flying training units, CFS, NCO Aircrew Training, Ascent (PFI), engineering training, logistics training and assorted others with a heavy dose of contractor support. As such it is pretty hard to find any savings, only additional expense if a fraction of it joined a one trick pony outfit such as Sandhurst.
Yes, I was just trying to stir up a little light hearted inter-service rivalry.
The sad fact is the only way to save significant amounts of money is to lose capability. We've seen that before when we lost Jaguar, Sea Harrier, Harrier GR9 and Nimrod. In that respect, the BBMF and even the RAFAT are relatively small pebbles.
However, losing amphibious capability has a strong hint of preparing to fight the last war.