Originally Posted by
Lima Juliet
We haven’t got enough flying to go around for the Regulars as it is. [...] The flying is one of the main reasons join up and hang around - when you start to get less than 200-250/year then the idea of Reservist Aircrew (even if paid the same) just wouldn’t make sense
That doesn’t really fit with the notion of a ‘next generation Air Force’ IMHO. 20-25hrs per month was the benchmark twenty years or so ago, when a sim was something you did to practice instrument flying or emergencies and not much else. The economics of the UK’s F35 commitment were predicated on more or less a 50:50 blend of live and synthetic training (it may even have favoured synthetic but I can’t be sure of the number). And OPSEC more or less mandates a lot of tactical training to be done in the sim. If any of their airships are considering the low flying rate to be a retention issue then I’d suggest that instead of flying 100-125 hours per year more than needed, they add the cost of 1 flying hour to regular pilot salaries and use the engineering capacity to grow the number (regular or reserve) of pilots to help make the exercise and deployment plot more sustainable at the individual level.