Bottom line for those on here...defence is going to get relentlessly hammered until somebody starts shooting at us.
And by which point it will be too late. This week I have sat in 2 meetings where the issues of establishments and capability were discussed, and where the issue of submitting ABC 15 enhancements for both areas was raised.
The message that was put out by the Chairman & J8 Finance was that we were encouraged to submit any bids we wanted, but must be under no illusion that getting any of them accepted would be tough and getting any liability uplift for military personnel would be more or less impossible. However, if we requested an uplift for areas such as J1/4/6/7 then civilianizing posts would be considered. This is all apparently on the back of Centre direction (blanket?) that Defence's military headcount is to be reduced at all costs across all the Services.
I understand that we are still dealing with the drawdown and various Tranches of redundancy, but unless there is a move to allow the creation of military liability where required, I am concerned that we are going to end up with a 2 tier Defence. On the hand we will have a huge number of low grade Civil Servants (most of the submissions I have seen have had E2s and E1s - roughly cpl equivalent -being recruited to do the job of experienced SNCOs, WOs and in some cases JOs) doing 9-4, nothing above and beyond what is written in their TORs, no station duties and certainly not deploying. Unless the drive to civilianize wherever possible is checked, the huge number of civilians will be balanced out by an ever dwindling number of miltary personnel whose raison d'etre would appear to be little more than extra duties, deploy and take all the risk.
Seeing as we are supposed to be all one team, I can't see how this approach can be anything other than divisive with large number of people turning up to do the minimum required to fulfill their contracts (I realise there are also some that really pull out the stops, but they are in a minority in my experience) whilst all the risk and long days, missed leave and extra duties are borne by a shrinking number of military personnel who now also have limited opportunities to move into broadening posts as they have all been civilianized.
If the past few years and weeks have shown us anything, the unpredictability of events means we must have a balanced military capability. The continuity achieved by civilianizing certain posts is undeniably valuable, but there has to be a limit. The desire for Defence on the cheap by civilanizing and contractorizing everything that isn't nailed down, will at worst lead to an unsustainable capability. Indeed, I have no doubt that Centre would like all the CS and contractors to also join the Reserves so they can be mobilized, however, at that point all the 'support' and staff functions stop. But once that military capability is lost, we won't get it back, or if somehow we do, it will be inexperienced and no match for a hardened opposition should the unthinkable actually happen.
Not only is Defence not repairing the roof, they are now flogging off what few slates are left and replacing them with polystyrene tiles. So my question is just how far is too far when civilianizing military capability for the sole purpose of saving a few quid?