All,
Don't start the North/South willy-waving contest again........pleeeeease!
Anyway, been on both sides of 'the bund' and the view from either side is great and everyone (apart from Juliet, apparently) takes their role very seriously and (dare I say it) professionally - shock horror!!?
CDS - As others have pointed out, a J with a K floor is a non-starter - period! SS was quite right to compare such folly with the retrograde step of replacing FADECs with 'Mrs Shilling's Orifices' - even if he was a bit harsh - perhaps you didn't appreciate the complexity/impossibility of changing the floor! Either way, please lighten up both.
J - Get 'serious'!
SS - As you know, I've seen both sides of the aviation spectrum and I think that Vin Rouge may have a valid point that manning/crewing levels are not doing you the best of favours and only predisposing crews and ground-staff to fatigue induced error/strain. Please let me know if I'm out of date but history, even if recent, is a good teacher.
In 2002-4, remember how hard everyone was working on the J in OIF - but you had 4 ac sitting on the pan at LYE with no engines! How hard would everyone have been working with 4 extra ac to fly?
Now, no-one expects a J, K or C17 to work 24/7 (except in a slip pattern - do you do those anymore?) but there is no reason why a well-serviced and maintained ac with the right number of spares and engineers in theatre should not be working 18-20 hours a day, even with re-roling and minor servicing (a contentious statement perhaps - so feel free to appraise me of the state of the AT fleets). But of course, most combat-threat flying is done at night which may reduce these hours a little!?
Truckkie - I accept that if you have to 'live' on the ac it may it cloud things a bit in theatre - but its nothing that a few portacabins, DRASH or even some 12 x12s wouldn't fix - its been done before!?
Unfortunately, I suspect all your problems will lie with Group/PMA manning levels rather than with the number of ac . In OEF and OIF (01-05), the Herc crewing levels had dropped significantly from that of the Cold War. In 01-02, trying to run an airbridge to AFG from a 'neighbouring country', we could barely keep 5 ac (out of 8) flying each night - with just 2 crews per ac in theatre (flying 17-21 hour 'days') and a full engineering det and a few AGEs. Back at LYE, the
theoretical manning levels were about 3:1 but we never got our full quota of crews in theatre; for the simple fact that they weren't actually available - or were knackered/out of hours! That's why you need more crews. We were lucky that our loads only required 5 ac/night, plus a spare frame , with 2 ac constantly being worked on. To the detacthment's great credit, even then, we ran the movers out of loads to AFG! Instead, they found us some pilgrims to take to Mecca but that's another story!
Okay, you won't need as many as 6 -7 crews per ac as VR suggests - perhaps 3 or 4:1 would be sufficient to allow for a short surge; bearing in mind, it feels like we have been 'surging' for almost 11 years - since Kosovo/Sierra Leone!
However, the fact is that the 2 Gp/AC budgets have shrunk (aided and abetted by PMA) so as to keep the ac crewing levels way below acceptable levels - they are probably about 2:1 for a constantly falling number of ac, which is barely sufficient IMHO. OTOH, if crew numbers were to increase there would be a greater training and admin burden - at geat cost to AC/HMG, so I don't think this is a starter.
However, should there be an accident where fatigue caused by insufficient manning is a major factor, then 'the MoD system' as a whole, could be at fault for not providing you guys with enough raw material (people) with which to do the job. Arguably, more ac would be better but the system would have to provide with more crews to go with them, so that's not going to happen either - its an 'angry oval' or 'vicious circle'; as you prefer!
Just getting on with it, in old military fashion, is just not sufficient defence these days. Everyone needs sufficient rest - its a physical requirement - just like food and water (and even sex)!!! Anyone who thinks they can get operate efficiently and safely with insufficient rest for more than a couple of nights, is fooling themselves. Countless studies and anecdotal evidence have underline this but yet we all convince ourselves we are 'fine, thank you'. If you want to see what years of insufficient rest does to someone - see how Maggie Thatcher and even Tony Bliar look now!
So, if you can't use the ac to their full potential with the number of crews that you have - don't try to get the proverbial quart out of a pint pot! Pressure your execs to point this out to Group/PMA and up the manning levels - which really would buck a trend.
I will gladly eat my hat if you succeed!
flipster