War-zone ops
HC - I think you might be surprised by what is going on behind the scenes, maybe not squadron strength ops but meaningful stuff anyway - but that's another very different story.
The gist of all this is that training in civvy street needs to be more focussed and task oriented so that we ease gently away from the generic crap of yester-year that was only designed that way because we took 20 years to fall in love with flight simulators and had to be able to do EVERYTHING on the real aircraft.
Back in the eighties the UK CAA mandated autopilots for light twins working night ops in the police segment of helicopter aviation. They neglected to mandate the necessary training that should accompany the introduction of this equipment so the inevitable happened and a helicopter crashed (mercifully with no fatalities) due entirely to mismanagement of the autopilot. The lesson is there to be learned so we need to look at the ratio of training in a TR syllabus (remember a TR is a professional pilot transitioning on to a new, and usually similar,type) spent teaching how to do all those profiles and associated engine failures and spend some more time on getting to understand the automation. The engine failure exercises should be moved to the (context related) operational TR section that (should) follow the basic licence rating.
Now you can see why there are advantages in role related training leading to role related ratings. If money is tight then let's focus it on the areas needed most.
My New Year's Wish - Please deliver us into a world where Evidence Based Training has arrived for real.
G.