Ivan
Whilst not entirely disagreeing with what you say, I think you are not thinking through the possible benefits of using non RAF/FAA badged operators in some roles.
Submariner sonar operators will obviously have enormous amounts of useful knowledge to bring to the party when hunting submarines, and conversely, imagine how useful it might be to have airborne trained operators back in the sub fleet post airborne tour.
Aside from that, do you actually have any idea what "stringent selection processes" submariner sonar operators go through or are you just making assumptions of superiority?
Do you honestly believe that the finest sonar operators are in aircraft rather than on subs which depend on it to stay alive?
I know that ex nimrod people tend to look down upon others in the field of ASW, but I think you need to grow up a little.
Incidentally. What RAF pipeline are you talking about? There is only an RN pipeline for rearseaters now, and it has plenty of spare capacity since it was set up with the expectation of all RAF WSOs coming through it. What we don't have is enough people in either service right now.