RLE,
A good post that I tend to agree with - it's easy for us to all sit around and presume we have a bunch of 'yes men' in charge. I don't think our lords and masters necessarily are 'yes men' but I often yearn for the mythical 'someone' to do the equally mythical 'something' about, for example, the stretch on the AT fleet (that's Air Transport if any PTIs read this forum). Personally, I don't even think money is the problem - it's how we spend it - and despite hearing the expression 'blue sky thinking' on several occasions I've yet to see any truly radical and revolutionary thinking.
Moroever, we have a blockage between 'Us' and 'Them' consisting of an unquantifiable layer of middle management who either filter out the bad news or are unwilling themselves to say 'no'. Within this layer we'll also find the vested interest brigade who magic up ideas like running up and down the gym one week before deploying to Basra, not least to keep themselves in jobs.
Unfortunately 'we' only tend to mix with equally helpless policy victims on a daily basis - bosses who can't get their frames fixed because their blokes are on IDT or similar blah, which despite being relevant to a military force, has come before generating serviceable aircraft (the air force bit) way too often. If 'they' were told it was interferring I would like to think 'they' would take action, but as it is the RAF's operations are summarised to 'them' on graphs, with specifics ignored, unless it's a particularly new or high profile op.
I'm not totally sure what the solution is to our troubles, except to say we need to keep the vested interests out of decision making. We also need to learn to communicate much better - and in both directions - especially while we have the luxury of doing so in peacetime. Asking questions shouldn't be the mark of a troublemaker - it should get extra marks for promotion!! Perhaps then 'they' will get a more accurate picture from 'us'.
Last edited by dallas; 8th May 2006 at 19:43.