Hoorah and Hussar! at last somebody else that believes Daavn have their memories clouded by a rosey glow of the old days of Air Troops. If they do actually get a whiff of this coffee are they going to take a look at how they are supposedly going to man this new "tank" when at present sqn aircrew spend more time on DFS's, ground handling, A/C washes and daily serviceing of their own flying kit,whilst vainly hopeing that an aircraft might be brought on line if the Tech's finish PT, Drill and their Drugs and Alchol ITD before Naafi break which means we should be ready for a ground run in an hour!!
One regiment is facing the prospect of allowing aircrew to go deliberate uncurrent to keep a core current, those that go uncurrent then face the prospect of backfilling shortages on the groundcrew roll.
Of course the Apache looks after itself so we wont need the extra grouncrews that are supposed to be on demand!
The QHI's that have been trained on the AH64-D have had the luxury of flying it in a training enviroment, how would they cope operating it as NCO aircrew in a field regiment without the support required from the rest of the "departments" to keep it in the air doing its job! and too busy pushing it in and out of hangers to remember what it does.
When the Aircrew and aircraft are not seen as a distraction to the SSM's agenda maybe we'll end up with the professional aviation organisation that people aspired to fly for.
Who was it said "Give us the tools and we'll do the job"?
[This message has been edited by Pep Tilbud (edited 20 March 2000).]