Originally Posted by
Timelord
I think we are getting to the route of the problem here. Defence requirements change. Sometimes quite rapidly and drastically. Flying training pipeline is not rapid even when working perfectly. Add the time taken to change a commercial contract to the inertia in the pipeline and you have the situation in which we find ourselves. The only answer would be to have enough people and aircraft in the service to provide slack which can be taken up when things change but those days are long gone. As someone said, we are where we are.
Timelord, I think you have hit the nail on the head with that post. I have taken the liberty to
highlight the most important word in my opinion. The rot set in when we tried to run our services as businesses since the late 90s. Look at the frequency of UK Defence Reviews since 1945:
We went from 12 years down to 5 years without changing our processes and ways of working. Also, all the idiots that tried to use their MBAs in our Service have seen to systematically destroy things with an insane desire for efficiency and ‘lean’ (which has ripped out any flexibility and resilience we ever had). Also the rustication of Gps into FHQs have totally fragmented the Command function. So I’m really not that surprised that things have been bad in the Flying Training world in recent years - I don’t blame the commercial partners, who are businesses, I blame those that forgot we are a service and failed to make the case to remain so...politicians and senior leaders alike.
Gosh, that’s a bit bleak for a Sunday afternoon!