Crab.
the only way to reduce costs is to cut quality or manpower or both (as they are inextricably linked).
Sorry, I have to disagree there,(now there's a surprise).
Manpower
can be reduced on SAR without any degradation in quality by simply looking at how a flight is
supported. Agreed, you cannot reduce the amount of people who are required to crew the aircraft,(please don't start the second standby thing again, we have done that to death!
) But just how many engineers and support staff do you need to support the unit? A civvy 24hr. SAR unit will run with 9/10 total. (Well at least when the transition phase of the current shambles sorts itself out anyway!
)
I am not having a go there, the way military servicing is carried out and signed off is different to the way it is done in the civvy world. The engineers also cover various other aspects of day to day stuff, from fuel management to being CAA approved fire crews to being storemen. Again
not a dig but how many engineers and other staff, WAAF making the coffee etc., (I really enjoyed mine by the way, coffee that is,) are at sunny Chivenor? Translate that into salaries and there are your savings, quite a lot across the SAR force I would imagine.
I
am surprised that no one has established a cost for miltary SAR. We had at least two visits from high ranking RAF(
not she whos' name must not be mentioned) and MOD officers in the two years before the harmonisation project was announced! They were allegedly costing both Civvy
and Military SAR. In fact they had just come from Leconfield. So what was that all about then!
3D