Tourist, I don't know where to start either. Bearing in mind that the whole international offshore oil and gas industry regularly rotates its entire workforce er, every few weeks...er yes. An FPSO, under long term refit but still operational, with a daily working crew of 600 souls will rotate through entirely over a 30 day period-fact. And that's from South Atlantic offshore Angola. It would relatively easy for the present RN set up on Bulwark to rotate the ships company on a 42 dayer (that's 6 full weeks). And the benefits..do I spell them out again? You will have twice the number of people who experience a live operation (for future ops purposes and training experience value). People are regularly rested and that reduces levels of stress/family breakdowns.. I could go on and on.
On this specific task, offshore Libya, it would be very easy to rotate, using Malta as an airhead. With a civvy charter plane once a week. Bulwark is pretty lean manned anyway and its got what..250 odd onboard. Piece of cake.
As for me, mate my record is second to none. I did numerous long, long deployments all over the world and on very varying tempos, platforms...and I've often thought back how much better they could have done it if they had used a little less....little less balls to be honest.!
Just because we grinned and bared it back then doesn't mean they have to do the same now.
Don't tell me though - you're dead old and dead manly and could do these trips in your sleep! (How many did you do btw)?
Our traditional methods of operating/fighting/working are now losing us wars. We radically need to rethink our ways =others are. The Libyan warlords are playing an absolute blinder against the British at the moment. Think about how we have helped them achieve what they now have and are getting.
p.s. the RN aircrew are being rotated through on Bulwark (please tell me they are), otherwise someone's missing a trick here!
p.p.s. as someone kindly pointed out, subs/bombers use this system in our Andrew and we think the USN.
And also finally...topmast! This was exactly the kind of thing it was for, its it still functioning>?