Originally Posted by
glum
True, but back then we had enough manpower to cover the arse of those time promoted. I was time promoted to Cpl in 91, but we had 120,000 or so at the time.
With only 40,000 now, those rapidly pushed up to fill the gaps left by the experienced SNCO do not have the luxury of safety in numbers, and with the extra burdens placed on all with JPA, OOA ops, On the job training of lower ranks and the new AMM's, keeping current with CCS, IRT, IDT, fitness, LITS, squeezing in leave etc, fear they may end up out of their depth and unable to deliver the quality Flight Safety demands.
A young Flt Lt has an old Flt Sgt to stop him screwing up - that's why there are first tourist posts!
By all means promote excellence, but I do fear we have gaps to fill, and will be forced to fill them with less than prepared people...
Surely the introduction of Self-Supervision and Multi-Skilling means that 40.000 is more than enough personnel to cope with the present tasking of the modern air force. Lets not forget that JPA has also released our admin staff to focus on more important issues and the contractorisation of ML2 within the Depth environment has been an outstanding success.
These are issues I have pondered over long and hard and finally my conclusions are inconclusive. Oh dear what a conundrum was it just my inability to see the plan? or was the plan flawed? Answer: who cares I'm off "Good Luck"