Twonston Pickle,
Hard to believe that you are concerned about 'threatened strikes'. These are usually a last bargaining chip necessary in the civilian world to secure a reasonable salary for those who do not have the advantage of an independent pay review body looking after them. Rest assured that if the 'ops' you refer to are perceived to be important in this country's interest, they would be given the precedence they deserved.
How you can bring the firemans strike into this argument is beyond me - don't think they were ever contracted out of the military.
This country has an outstanding record of support for the military when required and ex-servicemen and women employed on civilian contracts are more not less likely to give that support. However, if the military are overstretched or inconvenienced by political or military incompetance, don't expect their support to ease the problems.
As for the application of savings to the front line from contracting out , that is a matter for the head shed and the treasury. If you care to look at the figures, the savings are there and are availiable - if they don't look like they have done any good think how much worse off the military might be without them.
As I wrote in a previous post, the savings might not look so good when the contractors have to train their own people from scratch and pay a decent salary and pension. At the moment they are getting away with low salaries and minimal training costs - when the real price of these contracts kicks in maybe your lords and masters will realise that Trenchards air force was well structured.