Agree with Bob; far fewer than 50% of battlefield heli crews are qualified FACs at present; what makes anyone think this will change with Apache? Trying to secure a space on the course is a major task, then there are the problems with maintaining currency; unless we are going to regularly send crews to the States we will never be able to achieve this with the assets available in UK. Certain JRRF land formations have cried out for additional TACPs / FACs for years but can't have any more for just this reason. Only when ops are imminent are FOOs/Recce callsigns and the like trained up as emergency FACs.