It seems to me and a few more ex mil friends that in fact the civvies do not do it cheaper. What is not apparently taken into account is the cost of doing the actual job. With the services one finds the whole budget divided up into so many slices to arrive at a cost for any operation. These costs include pensions, retired pay, redundancy costs, etc etc whereas the "civvie" costs will be that paid to the contractor only. It is not just the bean counters that make decisions about these things. Get the greedy "scrambled egg" guys sorted and you may have effective and efficient military once again. If you think this is not so look at the structure and you will see an inverted pyramid if you add in all the "retired" people getting paid from the military budget. How many air rank do we have compared to how many aircraft for example? The system is a huge disservice to the people actually doing the job they signed up for and being shafted every now and then. Rant over!