Originally Posted by
Pure Pursuit
We can’t afford to keep an estate in its current guise. Places like Waddington are falling apart so, the plan to shrink the estate and keep the money saved within the defence estates budget makes perfect sense.
Keeping money within the DE budget is a huge assumption. If we’re lucky it will stay somewhere in Defence!
Can’t help but think it’s a false economy, clearly at the behest of an organisation that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Operationally the risk being built into the system is huge. The eggs/basket argument is well covered elsewhere so I won’t repeat it here. But that aside, once we’ve pulled out of areas no doubt some senior types in recruiting and media/comms will complain that large swathes of the country have no exposure or awareness of the RAF - not helped by dwindling numbers of air shows - whilst recruiting is difficult from the masses. Then there’s FAM and the potential options to rent nearby rather than buy/live on base. How affordable do you think property will be around these ‘superbases’ with everyone chasing the same property? Don’t be surprised if people fight postings to certain locations because property is unaffordable and they don’t want to live on base in a shed.
There are so many factors beyond the bottom line on a spreadsheet that need to be considered when coming up with an effective operational basing strategy. And I bet none of them have been considered as more important than a spreadsheet. They’d rather we were cheap than effective.