Any moment now the poem: 'I'm the last man left in the air force' will reappear - always good value and never ceases to give me a smile. Interestingly, many of the places and planes referred to in the poem are already gone or soon will be.
You can put the wholesale contractorisation thing down to Margaret Thatcher, IMHO.
As PM, Mrs Thatcher's reforms made the case that ; 'civvies can't be trusted with important defence work, 'cause they could strike and cripple the armed forces' an obsolete argument. In general, many of these contracted schemes have worked well and in some of the cases where they haven't, it's because the contract was badly specified in the first place.
I'm not so sanguine about the success of the thousands of reserves idea, however!!
Old Duffer (a sort of reserve!!)