I would also hazard a guess that most (not all) of the whinging on this thread come from people who don't do full length OOA tours, tend to use well found bases and live in hotels.
As someone who spent 6 years on TSW I can safely say that doesn't apply to me.
I never had the benefit of a 'well found' base to operate from, never had the advantage of RAF Regt personnel to assist if not do all the guarding for us and as for hotels, who wants a load of lads that stink of AVTUR wandering through their lobby?
As for
Gents welcome to the real world, this is what the Army and Navy have had to put up with for years. your manning levels have always been high (large numbers of Sp staff and Engineers on deployments). Now your numbers are reducing its all hands to the pumps.
What a load of cods.
Unlike the Army (and the Navy to a lesser extent) the RAF does not have a large amount of redundancy in the system to make up for personnel losses, be that through death, injury or secondment to non-primary duties.
Here's an example relevant to me.
In the Army if a deployed logistics base is being set up the RLC will send out fuels specialists, supply controllers, supply specialists, plant ops and many others whereas in the RAF many of those RLC tasks can be carried out by one Supplier, so thats all we send. As a Supplier I can work in many of the 'parts' that the RLC has but an equivalent RLC storeman can only do part of my trade.
I don't intend for this to be an 'us and them' comment (I'm ex-RGJ myself) but rather I post it to show its not al balck and white. We are different branches of the forces for a reason and we operate in different ways. The sooner we all realise this and stop trying to make every the same (green?) the better