Robin,
Are you always this condescending mate or does it take practice? Fair dinkum about the Mk9 accident and until the BoI is complete always wise not to speculate I know....so apologies.
However me old china, last time I flew in Bosnia it has some pretty substantial wires (Jajce-Cheddar Gorge etc), mountains (Czech Hip), trees and terra firma....and not alot of the blue fishy stuff (Hmmh-Titos lake might count)....odd big lake and the moonscape pretty similar. Then there is NITEX last year when they just cracked on over Scotland, and then there is all their amphibious stuff which, forgive me if I am wrong, has the concept of going at least 150 clicks in shore, this of course does not take into account their annual Pyss up in the emerald toilet (maybe the Xmaglen wires are removed for them or perhaps they are just tasked over the Loch?)....dunno mate you obviously know me than me but I would suggest that the navy boys operate in pretty much the same environment as you and I and the crustaceans.
As to price of life....don't be stupid there is no price....however when removing the blinkers, an increased risk now may see a significant reduction of the risk on operations. Training can still be supervised and with experienced aircrew at a graduated level until competentent. Now I never tempt fate so will not ask the tempting fate kind of question. But numbnuts, do you think the navy would let their new boys fresh out of the box pole on into an unrecced site or route if they did not feel as though the training had been given? Even if the navy were hopelessly blind, incompetent and with a significant accident rate an external authority/parliamentary question would have put it to bed yonks ago. Just a thought.
As has been mentioned before, wrap yourselves in cotton wool and mitigate risk then when you are asked to conduct operations the risk factor surely must increase ten fold. Personnally (and it is my personal limited opinion) I would prefer to increase the risk and training bill now to enable me to be more prepared for doing my job when required. It is as simple as that.
[ 19 October 2001: Message edited by: The Bonk ]