Harmony has little to do with tour length, its the number of days away on operations, supporting operations or in the workup to operations in a rolling 20 month period. Typical harmony figures during TELIC/HERRICK were around 250-300 days for AT Force. I think Rotary force did more and FJ was about the same for the guys around that time.
The RAF has harmonised tour lengths a few years ago, now all blue suiters can expect a 6 month Tour length. However, its worth noting that as most of us operate as a non-formed deployable unit, we very often do long stints, but shorter than a DWR away multiple times. I have in effect been on R0 equivalent for the past 10 years (albeit not looking at a 6 monther when called forwards). I suppose if you do a single 9-monther per FL tour, thats going to work out at about that figure? However, the flat top I cant see being at sea for a continuous 9 months, so people I am sure will get chance to skip off the tub at some point or other during that time if needs be. Simulator currency I expect will require at least one return home from the harrier/tonkka force during HERRICK although could be wrong on this!
One of the reasons the pongos can ram it when giving blue suiters bants about tour length. I often respond with "Oh tell me, which HERRICK deployments did you do", swiftly followed with, "that's nice - I did all of them".
Last edited by VinRouge; 11th Nov 2018 at 18:42.