There are some well off target comments in this thread which pass beyond banter, baiting and mischievousness into unhelpful, ignorant and downright porkies.
So some Apache are unserviceable and I wont gloss over a spares procurement SNAFU at a fairly high level but I have to ask the question why do you want all the Apache serviceable all the time if you don’t need to fly them? Two out of eight on any particular training day will give all your pilots a flight each day – why make the engineers work on aircraft that are not required? I know of no service aircraft engineers that would prefer to see one hour flown off all eight aircraft rather than four or five hours off each of the two.
After a tough and testing exercise taking the full complement of aircraft into the field and using some all of the time and high serviceability levels for the balance it would not be unusual for some aircraft to be carrying faults, which will be rectified on return to base. Here we are touching on the difference between serviceable and battle worthy. Serviceable is everything’s working and generally your engineers will advise you on that. Battle worthy means that some things are not working. The decision to take that aircraft on operations will be a commander’s decision. He may seek engineering advice but it’s a commander’s decision. Now the Apache is classic in this regard, there are so may toys that may not work fully but teamed up with another fully serviceable Apache it can play a full complementary part in battle.
Finally regarding sweetie shop procurement it is naive to think that the Army chose Apache over the other candidates all on its own. There was considerable war gaming involved using all candidate types with differing weapon and sighting system combinations and cost benefit analysis made of the results and a small fleet of all FCR equipped Apache produced the most cost effective solution over all the other types and mixes of types.
Well done 9 Regt AAC a great job done. A good thread too apart from the naval manure about 232?*? which defeats the mortals around here.
Remove Heineken crate and run for cover.