Five years ago, the Tornado IPT spent £600 million per year on the Tornado fleet. It now spends under half of that. On top of that, the Tornado Force has reduced by about 500 posts (representing over £15 million in capitation costs). These are HUGE savings - is it any wonder that it has caused a lot of pain to get to where we are?
Life is tight on the sqns and is likely to not get any better, but the fact is that we are meeting the op and training requirement.
Those who say we should not be run by accountants - come and join the real world! Defence has to be affordable, and Tornado has to be the same. We could not have kept going the way we were - with every MOB set up as a cold war citadel.
Yes, it's painful; yes, it ain't working yet; no, we didn't have a choice.