Wrathmonk
I would agree with your comments, but do you really think that Sqn Cdrs are concerned about 'their' career enough to continue with the sharade of (mis) informing the airships about things?
You may be a lot more current than I am so you may well be correct, but I would have felt that, a Sqn Cdr, would have had enough gumption to tell it 'as it is'. Certainly, in the Maritime world that was the way I believed things were done.
The other major 'problem' area I see is this stupidity of posting Officers after 3 years or so. As has been pointed out here, a new guy comes in and everythihg changes. Not literally, but it would appear that the changes are somewhat significant and lead to extra costs and delays. The RAF must learn to put someone in place at the begining of a project and leave them there until the end of it, or at least close to the end.
We have this culture of posting people to 'broaden' their careers and 'enlightening' them to other apsects of service life etc. But it is a disaster for major projects such as aircraft procurement. There becomes no accountability when things go wrong and overrun and should be stopped IMHO.
Likewise, I think there is an argument NOT to allow anyone to be involved in a project such as Nimrod, who has NOT come from a Maritime background and understands what is trying to be achieved. Time after I have seen people come from the FJ world into significant positions with the Maritime world or the AT world or whatever. They are all very nice people, but are out of their depth frankly. It happened all the time on the AEW fleet; you would get some ex FJ Pilot or Nav come because there was nowhere else to go! Simple as that.
But despite all of that, I still put the majority of the blame onto the airships. After all, they were once Flt Cdrs and Sqn cdrs and probably Stn cdrs and should have known better. the problem is however, that when you get up to the star ranks, the appeal for a position on the board of BWOS and other defence companies starts to glow!!
Very sad days indeed
Winco
edited because of rubbish grammar!
Last edited by Winco; 1st Feb 2011 at 11:49.