Brit 55
Yes, there is definite mileage in being togehter but the advantage, IMHO, is so small that it does not merit a huge investment like that. In the course of a normal working week the weapons team work with F15's, F3's, Typhoon, Hawk, GR4, GR7, KC135, VC10, FRA, Dutch F16's, French Mirage etc etc. All have different requirements and all think they are the most important.
My point is we carry out a huge range of control tasks and, therefore, we do not/cannot specialise to that extent. The E3D force is now heavily involved in CAS and a lot of other stuff. Being at every Typhoon brief/debrief is not going to significantly impact on our (corporate) perfomance.
Unfortunately, some of the F3 fleet do not understand what we do or what our scope is. They think we are here purely to serve them and them alone so they get frustrated when we do not provide exactly what they want when they want. Ask one of your 'mates' when he last visited a CRC? No easy answer.
The other suggestion is to put a controller on each squadron as a SME or POC. But., as you know, they will want a pretty 20 something to impress and drive their MT.
Merry Xmas
