What nobody has mentioned yet, is the problem is worse than the manning numbers suggest. As theses numbers do not take into account experience, qualifications, operational readiness, effectiveness, etc. The numbers are just bums on seats and not "guys who know what they are doing" versus "kid straight out of school".
I did kinda allude to it a couple of posts back 'r4. Maybe in a bit too much of a pi55ed up way though.
The 'Elephant' in the woodpile is of course that a newly qualified person ≠ someone who's been in the job a decade+. Oh, they might be more of a gym queen and use the requisite number of sirs per sentence, but I'd rather have a cynical, fat, wheezy, '20-a-day' expert on my team than an unimaginative drone with shiny shoes, who's absent every Wednesday afternoon, and who spouts management b-s at every juncture.
Got a feeling we're singing from the same hymn sheet though...