For a variety of perfectly obvious reasons skill fade will be an issue. However, let us be quite clear, keeping a small number of reservists pseudo-current in VSTOL jets will not have any benefits whatsoever.
We will have to wait and see what proposals, if any, come out. I don't think this would be feasible without at least a small cadre of personnel being kept full time. I read the article thinking that it was proposed to keep Harrier personnel (presumably RAF as well as RN). It would provide a capability to embark some fixed wing aircraft aboard
Illustrious until 2014,
Queen Elizabeth from 2014 (hopfully until 201x), and so on. Remember reservists can be mobilised for operations or deployments. I suspect this isn't going to be a crisis free decade.
If you want to operate cat and trap then that is the experience you must build and you must do it for a relevant cadre of pilots, i.e. pay for young pilots to get it with the two possible providers.
Agreed. But surely with former pilots from both services - they'll be at least a few of them that are not going stateside or across the Channel. And what of the skills of chockheads (need experience of moving live jet aircraft around a pitching and rolling deck), personnel involved in fueling, maintaining, and arming them, the Officer of the Watch and bridge/navigation team who need experience of working with flying going on, and so on and so on?
Apart from being a sign of desperation, this idea is less to do with the specifics of future cat and trap operations and more to do with the general basic skills involved in dealing with fixed wing aircraft at sea, and the teamwork needed. I think the term is
Corporate Memory.
As an aside, a Google search found this website (
Save The Harriers) as well as
other results.