the Army are a pain in the @rse to work with as they are often inflexible and just don't get the way we do things. I think merging the 3 services will cause everyone to lose - The light & dark blue will have to put up with antiquated and inflexible Army practice, the Army will have to put up with our 'modern and progressive' (by comparison!) ways, and we will all have to put up with the Navy's barking traditions. We're just all too different.
From my point of view (EX Civvy Comms specialist/Project Engineer and RNR Greenie) Of all three sevices the Army (RCS) had the most "Can do" attitude of them all. I had a project up at Balado which involved running some Fibre and installing a MUX. Not a big job but could I get the Civvy Techs to go up there? - could I bo110x! I explained the problem over the phone to the OIC there, and without even a request from me the Guy (A captain) had jobbed off his team to do the install. All I had to do was set it to work - Brilliant. Most of my Projects were Navy and they always tried to help as much as poss but shore comms to most of them was a black art! On the other hand the RAF (on a certain airbase in Morayshire that doesn't have tornado's) wouldn't even look after the Navy kit that was required to monitor surface movement's. Ask thier Techies to look at it over the phone and you got the bums rush! I can't count the number of times i've had to go up there being told that they had a serious problem only to find out the kit require a power-cycle or a properly trained Comms tech to operate it!...
... What I'm saying 16B is DONT KNOCK THE ARMY
But I definitely agree with you on the merging thing.