Merlin Mk 3 RN/RAF?
Here is the elephant in the room........ There are now not enough spaces in cockpits for the Jungly/RAF SH community. Why? The promised 22 Chinook buy has not materialised (thanks for the pipe dream Labour Govt!). The Chinook buy of 12 is simply not enough to sustain 2 Sqns worth of Merlin pilots moving across to the green banana. The other elephant is that Puma 2 has been reduced in number (24 - ish). The future RW strategy was written with this assumption(with an RN Jungly 2* at the helm). Now that assumption has been kiboshed, CAS has simply reverted to an obvious standpoint. With 35 fully trained Mk3 RAF Merlin crews, most of whom have served in AFG this year, why should he make his own aircrew redundant just to save the RN Jungly force.....? Especially as the PM trumpeted helicopter lift as a highlight of SDSR.
The sheer amount of money to retrain the Jungly Force (42ish crews) with the RAF essentially footing the instructional and real estate bill at Benson for the next 5 years, (in addition to training it's own to fly the banana) are simply an expense we cannot afford. The geography alone makes it a nightmare for both Services. RN have to travel to and from Benson to undertake an heavily simulator based course and living in hotels due to no accn at Benson. The RAF trying to retrain to Chinook without the airframes or enough simulator support. This in addition to making some redundancies amongst his own, make this a no brainer for CAS, hence the wording in SDSR. Given the same situation in reverse, the RN would not think twice about denying the airframes to the RAF. The bottom line is that, this is not the fault of the RAF - the circumstances have simply changed beyond the control of both Services. Sadly, I did not even see the Jungly community mentioned in the RN section of SDSR. Why? Were they sold down the river by the fishhead community to save the 2 big boats?