Typhoondriver
The Armageddon that you describe is hardly going to be sorted by a handful of part-time Reserves, that get paid 2-3 times the daily rate that their Regular counterparts get, with no deployments (unless they want to) and are taking what precious little flying there is to stay competent/recent/current, is it? What you describe can only really be squared away through a number of things:
1. Prioritise the OpCon for output.
2. Get more people through MFTS.
3. Reduce the workload so that the ‘quality of life’ improves.
4. Make other ‘quality of life’ improvements (there are lots for - accommodation, promotion opportunity, trusting people (rather than constant audit), bring back admin support on Sqns, guarantees of geographic stability, etc...etc...).
Or we can take your solution - pay everyone more. But then all you end up with is rich pilots, still wire-locked in the p!ssed off position, because you haven’t fixed the problems that are p!ssing them off!!! If we introduce £500/day VERR pilots then watch how really p!ssed the remaining Regulars get. Also, as Typhoon and F35 have a new complexity that we have never seen before, watch how many fail to stay on top of their game (recent Typhoon PTVRs haven’t been very successful, have they?).
You don’t need to pay Buck Rogers very much at all if you let him fly and give him a decent quality of life...