Originally Posted by minigundiplomat
The Chinook engineers have been constantly deployed since 1982; and lived for extended periods in every kind of sh1thole - tents, barns, 4 tonners, the back of the aircraft and bombed out office blocks - KAF/AKT are actually a huge and recent level of improvement.
They deliver the goods every time; whether it's -25 and snowing sideways or +50, outside of the wire recovering a down bird in Musa Qala or on a grey funnel carrier for months. They take pride in what they do, because they understand the importance of what they do - right down to regularly sluicing blood out the back of the IRT aircraft.
MGD, referring to my earlier post; there are plenty of fleets who have had lengthy, enduring periods on ops, but nowadays it's unprecedented. Yes, Chinooks have been away somewhere pretty much every year since 1982, and the Tornado GRs since 1991; but at those times, there were so many more people.
I think we had in the region of 10 Tornado squadrons in the mid-90s (2, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 27, 31, 45, 617...?) to service deployments. Even when they first did HERRICK, the GR4 force had 7 squadrons to share the load (2, 9, 12, 13, 14, 31, 617) with bolstering from the OCU.
Now, the GR4 soldiers on with 3 squadrons. Less than half the number of crews as the start of HERRICK, and with ELLAMY, Africa and SHADER all rearing their heads before HERRICK properly finished.
It's not being continuously on ops,
it's being continuously on ops with such a small force that each individual is on ops much more. That's why I don't give credence to the "didn't they join up to go on ops?" argument; yes they did, but not constantly with nothing else and no respite! I gave the example of my colleague who's now on his 22nd month away in 32. While the Chinook force as a whole may have been fighting various wars since 1982, I'd warrant that it's only within the last 3-4 years that they've been cut so much they've started hitting this level of deployment; which is why they're being struck with so many PVRs!
Likewise the GR4 guys. I work with ex-GR4 navs who are thoroughly hacked off at the prospect of being dragged back to see the jet out of service, knowing how few people they are and how overstretched they are.
When you PVR, it lets you list your top 4 reasons for leaving. I wonder how many people in the last 3 years have put "overstretch and operational commitments" at the top?