There’s a lot of harking back to the holding generation of the mid-to-late 1990s to (sort of) excuse the parlous state of MFTS. However a much less flattering comparison is with the state of the pipeline from about 1999 pretty much until the fateful SDSR in 2010, which is essentially what MFTS was meant to replace. It was not unknown to go from IOT graduation parade to the FJ front line in under 3 years around the turn of the millennium. Granted, EFT could be done while at UAS, but (unlike BEagle) I think that was a good system that bought back ~12 months of the ‘age penalty’ incurred by university.
I say ‘age penalty’ not because of career or promotion issues - clearly illegal these days - but because of the very real issue that outlook, lifestyle and commitments generally (deliberate emphasis!) change as the thirties are reached. By that point I’d done enough - two full tours and a ‘postgrad’ qualification - to understand what a future in the Service had in store for me and could commit myself to it. By comparison, someone facing those life choices as a first tourist has much less to go on; it’s small wonder that fewer seem to have the confidence in their future progression to stick around.
The long holds at the moment - even for EFT, for Chrissake’s! - are a waste of precious years of youth that should be spent deploying left, right and centre and gaining the experience that we so badly need. Frankly, the decision to recruit with no prospect of timely training was absurd to the point of negligence. The seniors responsible have left their successors with no good options: replacing all the holdies with fresh young recruits is probably illegal, while keeping them will make the front line into even more of a flat, we’re-slightly-too-old-to-be-enthusiastic place than it has already become. Thanks a million!
[By the way, I think the idea of getting more people out into civilian life before large pension and allowance liabilities are incurred is a reasonable one. But, you need to get your pound of flesh first... which we’re abjectly failing to]