Thanks for keeping it simple mate all us Army blokes are thick don't you know.
The army as I have tried to point out are doing tours of 4 months in 16 - not nice for them. The RAF (and RN) Harrier pilots are doing the same. If we deploy more Harriers then we cannot sustain the Harrier force. Simple really.
All I am trying to get across here is that the GR9 force is a small force - you are probably looking at no more than 80 pilots total - and it is not the RAF's decision to deploy more, or different types of aircraft. Trust me I know a few GR4 crews who would be more than willing to help the GR9 force in Afghanistan. If you are short of fast air, go through the theatre commanders to request more -if it gets stopped it will be at MOD or Government level over which the RAF has no control!!
Again I don't mean to be annoying but we've been in this war thingy for 6 years now, whats the RAF been planning for in that time? If you cannot deploy more than 7 cabs before the organisation comes unstuck then whoever organised it needs shooting. But more importantly things need to change to remedy the fault.
Oh and by the way
It takes 9 months to train a GR9 pilot, the OCU is running at maximum capacity at the moment. The only way to increase capacity is to withdraw frontline pilots to go to the conversion unit which reduces the number of pilots available to deploy. Chicken/Egg.
Fair enough but its not as if this has just snuck up on us, as I said we've been at it for 6 years now.
And finally the Army has asked for more fast Air, many many times. But your comments above say the RAF (as an organisation, I'm not bitching at people here) cannot supply it. I have to ask again, if you can't provide cabs, or more than 7 of them, to support British troops on operations then what are you there for?