At risk of rehashing old issues and bear in mind that the opinions below are purely my opinion. I have been involved in sport parachuting for almost 30 years now and have been 'around' PTS for nearly all that time. I'm also ex Herc crew, albeit a route Queen.
PTS are a spent force, there is absolutely no reason to continue to train for mass static line parachuting in todays British military. I can see a limited SF role for this, but that does not justify PTS's existence There is clearly a space issue at Future Brize. PTS take up a rather large building and an entire hangar. Can anybody see how PTS can survive the SDSR? We don't have the hours left on either flavour of Herc to waste on S/L training, just so that Para Regt can earn their para pay, trot's out tired old line of 'when was the last British airborne assault'. Any SF S/L requirement could easily be fulfilled by Bragg as would the MFF requirement. The only question that may arise is keeping up aircrew quals, a limited number of PJIs could rotate through Bragg/Hereford on a permanent basis and Herc crews could do a couple of dets a year to Bragg.
Sport Parachuting has always led the way of any Military jumping in this country, both in terms of equipment and techniques and RAF WOTG has always been PTS's eyes on the Sport Para community, they follow what we have been doing for years. Now, I am reliably informed that OC Adventurous Training (AT) has decided to cease all Sport Para at WOTG as of next year. I believe there may be a hiden agenda here though. AT will still continue though. Again this is just another 'reason' to keep WOTG open for the white elephant that PTS has become and to try and keep all para in the light blue basket. If this is the case, do we 'need' two AT dropzones why not consolidate WOTG/Netheravon into one DZ, the obvious choice would be Netheravon.
I am a staunch advocate of Sport/Mil para and I realise that the above appears to go against that, but you just have to do the numbers in todays climate to see that it makes logical sense. If they're talking about binning two new carriers then what chance do PTS have in the big scheme of things.
Just my tuppences worth.
And just to cast out and see what bites, I was selected for and worked for my brevet, unlike PJIs
