Originally Posted by 5F6B
I should imagine the FJ flying I did over Afghanistan was probably very similar to a lot of the flying people did as part of WARDEN, Northern/Southern Watch etc.
The support package and kit is probably a million miles better, though. Despite the popular comments about under-equipped Brits, I couldn't believe the amount and quality of kit I was given for my first jaunt to war. No tents either, so while it wasn't quite GW1/Bahrain hotel levels of comfort, coming home to an air conditioned room with (limited) wifi, hot showers, an excellent gym, a coffee shop etc made going to Afghanistan a surprisingly bearable experience, compared to what people right out in the field manage with.
The jets, while they had the vast majority of kit they wanted and were being constantly upgraded, there were still a few things to cause frustrations. When I talk to some of the execs and PA guys, I get the impression that life on ops was broadly similar.
When I looked back at old squadron diaries, it all looked pretty similar. We did just as much drinking at happy hour and dining-in nights, but a lot less during the week.
That's a pretty good summation, as far as it goes.
My first Op was the Pre-GW1 deployment, my last was HERRICK. The ability to do the task needed has improved immensely over that time. Now, if the target is a single person with minimal collateral, it can be done....back then you would have had to ask them to stand alone in the middle of a football field.
KAF was not a bad place at all, even better when things were kicking off as we could do the job we were trained to do, as opposed to the utter nause that was Southern/Northen Watch.
There's clearly a lot more that has changed RAF-wide, but in my small corner of the service, that's the major one, the ability to actually do the job well.