Come on Guys (and girls if any even bother to look here). Pprune Mil Aircrew used to be a forum where we could all have a bitch and moan about things that were happening to us or even to divulge a few official secrets (by accident of course). But now it seems to be a forum where what starts off as a serious thread very quickly becomes a slagging off between Merlin and Nimrod, Muds v's Fighter Jocks, VC10s Tri and C130s. I don't post very often but I do keep an eye on things and it really has deteriorated rapidly - the poor old E3 guys can't get a word in edgeways now for fear of a severe slagging, possibly because of a lack of any real experience of operations or maybe they just can't be bothered any more.
Please lets stop slagging each other off in such a public manner, we SHOULD ALL have a role in a fully balanced Military Force, even the Navy has a role in curent ops ... somewhere.
The fact of the matter is that the UK Government has sold us all down the river. We are punching way above our weight on the international stage and there are too many levels of management right across the services and even all of the public sector.
If MOD were a public company we would have gone to the wall years ago, that or had many major restructuring sessions to cull out the inverse pyramid of power that we have now. We need to take a leaf out of the Israeli Defence forces and look at their force structures. I bet they have far more front line Battle Tanks, Missile Systems, Ships, Aircraft etc etc compared to high level staffs and civil servants than any of the other World armed forces. Lets face it they are the ones who we should all be modelling ourselves on - politics aside.
The sad thing is that whilst we have the luxury of being able to banter away on such a back stabbing forum that this has now sunk to, another 4 UK troops have lost their lives this week due to a lack of sufficient decent equipment supporting them on the ground whether that be, SH, ISTAR, CAS, MEDIVAC assets, hardened vehicles or body armour. We all try our best with what we have left and that is what makes the British Armed Forces what they are.
Meanwhile the Defence Ministers sit in their Ivory Towers and congratulate themselves on saving another 5% off the future budget by delaying yet another project that the military needs.
WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT AND IT IS TIME WE STARTED TO SUPPORT EACH OTHER
One day you might actually need that E3! (60 miles across the Iranian Border with Migs all around)