Davey Emsey - as they say in France .... L'idiot!
what Spaceman is saying is - do you want the man or woman that is leading you into battle to be one of the most inexperienced people in the Sqn as he's spent the last few years serving tea to a faceless bureaucrat in MOD Main Building?
.....but I digress... thank you all for your replies on what I feel is one of the most serious issues facing the AAC in the near future, i.e. how are we going to shape the leaders of the future. Like it or not we will be commanded by officers - many SNCOs could do a better job in many circumstances and will do so I have no doubt, but the fact remains that a lot of patrol leaders will be young officers in their first tour, or officers who have been honing their pen-pushing skills in a job unrelated in any way to flying through no fault of their own.
This needs to change.
We haven't fought a major war in many many years, and those we have fought have mainly consisted of us helping the yanks to severely kick the @rse of a totally inferior opponent.
Success in battle is a cr@p teacher.
Now what happens when China decides to annex Taiwan and in we go with Uncle Sam?
I'll tell you what - we get a fair few WAH-64s blown out of the sky is what.
Make no mistake - AH will be the spearhead, the scalpel, the vanguard, the pre-emptive strike - do we want to be led by someone who does this in between staff jobs?
I don't expect things to change overnight, but why for christ's sake are we sending them off to totally unrelated jobs like SO2G1/G4? We need Specialist NCO's led by Specialist Officers.
Nuff said on that one.
Jointery - nice idea but it HASN'T GONE FAR ENOUGH!
My colleagues in NI (where the JHF is alive and, er, well...) inform me that at coalface level it works fine - AAC and RAF, we fly, we get the job done in our own little ways, generally no prob.
The problem is once again in command - The RAF Sqn Comds are Wing Commanders (Lt Col). The AAC Sqn OCs are Majors. Bugger. slight problem there. The infighting is apparently quite tedious - and unfortunately for the Army, slightly one-sided.
All I want to know is this: Why don't we just grab the bull by the horns and start from scratch. And make a JHF which encompasses all the rotary Lift and offensive capability with dedicated personnel who are given the time within their careers to excel at airborne mayhem.
The Ship is drifting my friends, and the hands on the tiller are old, weak and indecisive. I'm not against Senior officers - I'm just against the ones that don't see a need for radical change.
We need firm and proper leadership, not geriatric meandering from visionless technophobes with one eye on an OBE and one foot in the grave.
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Christopher Robin
[This message has been edited by ChristopherRobin (edited 30 March 2000).]