As has been said or intimated, putting a Pilot in the boot would, at first glance anyway, seem to relieve the shortage of WSO/Navs. I think there'd be a rush for the door from a Pilot branch perspective if that were the case. Few signed up to that, flying tours are now like gold dust and it isn't where most Pilots would wish to find themselves (note I said "most" not all) It's just robbing Peter to pay Paul at the end of the day. The system incorrectly took the saving a few years back, probably on "risk" and will pay for it as it comes back to bite their proverbial behinds. Such is life; we all make mistakes and hardly ever learn from them.
CM, I was thinking the same thing as you. The money has to come from somewhere but at the same time CAS doesn't want to see any further reduction in his combat aircraft numbers which are already barely more than Sweden's!
The Chancellor has, yet again, unscrupulously set another bar for Defence to find money in-year and seems to forget that although we stopped spunking money at the Afghanistan problem, the ISIS one is still very much right at the front of the RAF's mission. All this against a backdrop of ageing platforms (GR4) that require a replacement within the next SDSR period.