Originally Posted by
Biggus
As this seems to be a general nautical/RN thread, I see the UK Defence Journal is running an article highlighting that HMS Daring has just passed 3,000 days out of service - longer than it took to build.
And an absolute poster child for the RDEL issue. Operated successfully around the world in her first commish, then reduced to low-readiness (due to overall lack of engineering staff with the correct quals in the fleet - not overall numbers - an RDEL issue wrt training and retention) in advance of her first refit. Had to wait for Dauntless to complete first PIP refit and hamstrung by shortage of BAES capacity in waterfront support (RDEL contract again), before having all non-PIP work done in Portsmouth and then towed to Birkenhead so Cammell Laird could implement the PIP - absolute madness IMO - then returned to Pompey. However, during sojourn in Birkenhead - and later Pompey - STOROBed to f8ck due to shortage of equipment items to keep active T45 running (RDEL yet again).
The BAES team in Portsmouth are all tearing their hair out because of the amount of STORobing - and consequent effort - required to keep the active fleet available. Logistics, logistics, logistics. Largely all RDEL, or lack thereof.