RAAF Aircraft Inventory
As one of those "old veterans" whom, it seems, some would have everyone believe should be denied an opinion I simply offer the undeniable fact that our RAAF has been allowed to be "disenfranchised" in terms of maintenance capability due to the "out sourcing" to civil maintenance organisations.
It would seem to me that this loss of numbers of serving maintenance personnel, the run down of airlift capability diversification in now not having an aircraft capable of performing the tasks previously undertaken by the Caribou and no rotary wing element in the RAAF certainly leads me to believe the RAAF is not the force it was.
We have the Super Hornet, a stop-gap measure, the King Air which it may be argued is in no way capable of much in comparison to the Caribou and it seems a less than adequate training organisation within ALG if pilots are having to wait 18 months for conversion. The RAAF will achieve it's tasking, as it always has, however to do so is becoming increasingly difficult as our aircraft inventory shrinks.