It's not that you were asking too much, just good to have some context to pitch replies. Good questions and well worth discussing.
I left the services a couple of years ago and am certainly underwhelmed at the idea that some young pilots have to wait months and even years for conversions. That's certainly way different to when I started in the 80s, where a couple of months would have been unusually long between the end of pilots course and the start of conversion.
I'm sure the current situation breeds discontent and contributes to a kind of loss of belief in the system, which is a shame. Just when young boggies should be out flying their arse off, a lot can't.
Reasons for the situation? Numerous, I guess. Some that spring to mind are bottlenecks in training units due to experienced instructor availability, and the relentless drive for budget cuts and efficiencies, plus the relatively high cost per flying hour of a lot of the more complex and modern types, making it a bigger deal to just get airborne than it once was.
Generalisations there, but a couple of ideas anyway.