Lack of stores
More Battles have been lost to lack of Supply and Logistics that you can shake a stick at. By the sounds of it (I have been out for 8 years) the RAF Supply network as been taken back 40 years, by handing most of the Supply network to the Army (God Bless Them). Back in the late 70s when the RAF Supply got its first real time computer, the AMSO could for the first time there and then see what he had in stock and where it was located and in the case of reparables what condition they were in and how long it would take to get them back on the shelf. In the RAF not a spare part large or small ever belonged to an individual unit or Sqn it was always owned by the bigger RAF, and could be moved to where it was needed by command authority or even by some SAC working in PPC (Priority Progression Cell). This global visual of your assets was developed over many years in conjunction with the engineers and worked quite well. Don’t get me wrong nothing was ever perfect and there was always some chap who could not get a pair of shoes or socks, and to the average Joe the effectiveness of the Supply network was only what he could see in front of his nose which is understandable. But the bigger system did deliver especially to where it was important i.e. Aircraft grounded by spares in some far flung land. As the previous post stated Max and Min stocks were the life blood of any Stacker worth his salt, especially when it was done manually before effective computer systems. Even under the manual system daily reports were still signaled to Command reporting major or important items which would affect operations. In the Army this was never the case in fact once issue forward from depot it vanished into a black hole and only at regimental level did they have visual on assets. So you had the case of one regiment of Tanks U/S for spares only to have a regiment down the road with a load of spare that no one could see. In the first Gulf war the only way for the Army in Germany to prep their tanks and other important vehicles was to place adverts of BFBS TV asking all QM to report stocks, all the RAF had to do to find out about Aircraft bits and bobs was to ring command or PPC as ask for a global and they could tell you where all the bit were located and what levels of serviceability they were at, it is just as important to know what you have not got as it is important to know what you have got. So after years of developing a system for the tracking and locating valuable assets it looks as if has been kicked into touch and given over to Army. I am sure the current RAF Suppliers or (Logs Sup) or whatever they are called are doing the best job possible, but it seems the system behind them is going to Rat ****. The Military have never been like industry and unexpected wars or operation sometimes bite you in the Bum, so effective stock reserves or manpower reserves are still a must or you will fail or at least not be able to go on for very long.