AG
[Sigh] It's with the unease of foreboding and the disquiet of being 'suckered in' that I reply.
[quote] I also see a need for a specific command to be created, simply responsible for the movement and organisation of the Forces. It could be seen as a sort of 'Supply Command', and could look after everything from getting troops into the back of Hercs, to shipping missiles and bombs down to the Gulf.
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It's called the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) and it was formed in Apr 99 (if I remember the year correctly). The bit of DLO reponsible for the movement of equipment and personnel is the Defence Transport Movement Agency (DTMA) and is based at DLO Andover. Rather laughingly at the time, the MoD magazine 'Focus' ran an interview with the newly appointed Chief of Defence Logistics who had gone from army cpl to 2- (or 3-) star, captioning a photo of him as [quote] The new purple head of logistics. <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> <hr></blockquote>
As for your comments on the Canadian forces, people are referring to the fact that several years ago, they joined completely; single uniform, joint command structure, logistics et al. However, they found that morale, service identity, retention and recruitment all suffered significantly. As a result, whilst they maintain more jointery than we do, they have pulled back from the brink and now have 3 services again in all but name. Instead, Canadian military savings came from more radical methods that, whilst I have never been FJ (to my relief <img src="wink.gif" border="0"> ), I would never want to see enacted within the RAF.
[ 02 March 2002: Message edited by: opso ]</p>