Originally Posted by
SRENNAPS
PompeySailor
Thanks for that. Very interesting.
Can I assume that our military experts in the MOD agreed that a cannon was not essential for a ground attack aircraft and therefore did not consider an alternative gun. I suppose they were able to produce some statistics that showed that cannons have been a complete waste of time in the history of air warfare. Maybe they still had their “only need a missile that can hit a target 100 miles away” head on.
More concerning is that this email episode needs to be seen as part of a much larger and more worrying picture. The Army are suffering from lack of basic equipment, or poor and malfunctioning equipment, specified by people who have never, and will never, need to use the stuff in the field. The RAF are suffering from cuts in manpower and equipment, the RN has a shrinking fleet and is about to be subjected to a review of dockyards. We have concerns about pay and conditions, the two main items of Service life that the upper echelons should never mess around with.
We have watched, from three different standpoints, the Armed Services of this country be reduced, misemployed, under-funded, and vilified by an ill-informed press and a public that doesn't really understand us. And I think that we are almost at the point where it is too late. We are not recruiting enough, we are not receiving enough funding, and we are being used in places, and for jobs, that we should not be used. Foot and Mouth, Fireman's Strikes, our medical staff being used as free labour on the training wards in Birmingham to cover up the Governmental failings in the NHS in that area.
The media are more concerned with seeing us as an easy story - we do things and go to places that journos are quick to tell us they go to as well - but we don't go on their wages, with their insurance policies, or their ability to put their hands up and say "I'm a journo, get me out of here." This story shows the lengths that they will go to to misreport a story to try and divide the Services - but if you look at ARRSE and on here, that has not happened. A common enemy has stuck it's head above the parapet, and no-one will turn down the chance to take a shot at a journo!
We need to be given a public voice which has the backbone to stand up and tell the journos to sod off - to take the parts of the emails which the media ignore and to hold them up for public scrutiny - the lack of funding, the lack of support, the constraints everything else that we have to deal with on a daily basis. When the GR7 pilot is on task, but he hasn't been paid that month, or he knows that the kit he flies is as good as it can be, but not as good as he would like it to be, or when the Tom on the front line is scared ****less because he doesn't know if he will be CMd or shot, their needs to be someone that really looks out for us - and the Chain of Command is now so intertwined with the political machinations in London, SW1 that it no longer serves that purpose.