It's quite surprising to go into the Officers Mess at Wyton and look at the 'named' mail slots. Last time I had the misfortune to visit (took an aircraft for some arb open day) back in 2002 there were 7 Air Cdre slots, 36 Gp Capt slots and innumerate Wg Cdrs.
Let's go back to the old days and 'lean' properly - cut the air ranks drastically and have a pyramidal career structure where each squadron is commanded by a sqn ldr, each wing by a Wg Cdr and each stn by a Gp Capt. I believe the Israelis still have something similar in place and manage to run their equally capable air force with a fraction of the 'air-rankage'. The savings made on cutting 10 AMs (£1.5M), 20 AVMs (£2.7M), 100 Air Cdres (£10M), 400 Gp Capts (£35M), 1000 Wg Cdrs (£75M) & 2000 Sqn Ldrs (£125M) would EASILY pay to 'un-civilianise' the RAF (savings of around £275M). Maybe then there would be more people to deploy!!
Using ukmil's quoted figures of 414 Gp Capts ... WHO, HIGHER UP, CAN TELL THE TAX PAYER WHY WE HAVE MORE GROUP CAPTAINS THAN AIRCRAFT?