Dude, you obviously never did guard duty at Linton on Ouse in the late 80s with pick axe handles then! Also, I can recall doing guard at Winnipeg whilst the engineers slept and I was the reserve crew on the sweeper Herc. It happens, it’s a temporary arrangement, and if people are going to get seriously bent out of shape about a temporary once-or-twice in a career ask then maybe they aren’t made out to be part of the military team?
Yup, it’s the jump in pension 2 years in rank on AFPS75 that is hammering most people due to the way the ‘rank in the last 2 years calculation’ is made. On AFPS05 it might hit folks at OF-4 or above, but for AFPS15 then this is unlikely to be a factor mainly due to the career average calculation. If you can be bothered you can work it out with this step by step guide:
https://www.gov.uk/government/public...ax-year-201718
Don’t forget that pension tax is not a military thing and if you are provisioning for a pension to pay the same amount as AFPS then the same tax rules will apply if you are a UK resident.