Reading with interest as I have an interview soon. Not a military pilot me, but of military background, been a strawberry a few years now.
Will the Ascent partnership prove more expensive to MoD then if it had gone alone? Of course. These companies (Lockheed Martin & Babcock) exist to make profit for their shareholders, so by definition to my mind that has to make it more expensive then if MoD have gone alone. But MoD doesn't have the capital to do it, but the Ascent partnership does - and it has to make a return on its investment and to pay dividend to it's shareholders. You don't have to read to far on Babcocks website to find the "shareholder" word.
Whether it can deliver, different kettle of fish. Be interesting to see what they make of a civilian FI? This is a very different kettle of fish to Instructing at your average flying club. I met some very talented people in my time in the military, but have met some very talented people in flying outside of it.
As for the long term and where they are going to get the Instructors from, that could prove interesting over the next 25 years. The throughput of ex service pilot's will diminish as the services continue to shrink. In the civilian world far fewer people become FI's these days to build experience because that's not what the airline beancounters want. They want young boys & girls, with access to large amounts of cash to pay for a type rating once they have their CPL issued. Look elsewhere on here and you will hear stories now of ex military pilots who could only get into the airlines now if they paid to fly. Not the case as recently as 5 years ago.
If SDR results in 20% cuts in the Defence Budget as some are predicting then where it leaves the whole PPP could be interesting. Be interesting to know what sort of annual throughput of pilot's being trained Ascent based their figures on? Cut it by 20% and can you make that return on the investment?
Finally somebody gave me an indication (a pleasant one) of what the salary might be. My initial re-action was I could get a whole bunch of low hours FI's from around the south east at the moment who would gladly do it for under half of that to put hours in their logbook. Now start scrowling up through my previous paragraphs and applying that thought.....