A defence source told the Times: 'There is now a bottleneck. No military pilot has started training for six months and there is no solution in sight.'
According to the source a row has now broken out between the defence contractor Babcock and the German manufacturers about who was responsible for the failures.
The source added: 'The aircraft are provided by Babcock under a PFI. The contract is to provide flying hours per year.
'They are wriggling out of it saying it is a design fault, which is surprising considering the the supply of flying hours is the essence of the contract.'
Wonderful things, PFIs....
Strange how we never had these problems when we did things properly, with Tiger Moths, Chipmunks, Bulldogs etc. - and even
ab initio Jet Provost training. But no - the bean counters decided to contractorise things and to use this wretched Plastic Pig which clearly isn't up to the job.
'The MOD can confirm that the Babcock Grob Tutor aircraft are currently undergoing a pause in flying operations whilst an on-going mechanical issue is investigated.
'The impact to the training pipeline is being mitigated by the adoption of a number of measures including the use of other platforms.'
And which 'platforms' might those be?
A 'pause in flying operations'? A 'pause' of nearly 5 months....
It's lucky that there's no real urgency to train military pilots for what passes for the UK Armed Forces these days...
UAS life must be a barrel of fun. What a wonderful start to a youngster's flying career - 'The props are falling off the Plastic Pigs, but we've no-one left with any idea about how to fix them back on again.... But hey, you can go hill walking instead!'....
