Surely procurement and manning should go hand in hand, nothing these days tends to be off the shelf, if you order xyz flying Thrungebuckets, the into service date / delivery date will be measured in years.
Therefore you need to recruit and train those required to operate and service your Thrungebuckets plus a percentage for support, natural wastage and failure rates at the time the orders are put in.
Otherwise you will have Thrungebuckets stored all over the place without the manning to operate and maintain them which negates the point in ordering them in the first place.
We also need to address the haste in which we rush to scrap aircraft with perfectly good hours remaining on them to give the taxpayer a good return on their monies.
Far better would be to mothball the fleets as war reserves. Heck stick them out in the US desert if needed. Flogging off fleets like the Harrier was nonsensical when they could have been stored as a cost saving measure.
I would also bring back an RAF Reserve similar to the US National Guard where retired military pilots flying airlines etc would / could be kept current on service types in case of a national emergency.
…
Last edited by NutLoose; 15th Jan 2023 at 05:01.