Keep them on the civil register, £70k a pop, get the instructors to become SLMG instructor qualified and Robert is your Dad's brother. As for money, for every 3 'part task trainesr' we could have one of these motor gliders, plus the money spent on that gin palace at Syerston could buy a whole fleet!
At present all of the eggs are in one basket with the Viking option. The amount of money being spent on these ageing aircraft is COLLOSAL and comes at significant risk that no-where near the 70-odd will be recovered to airworthy. Buying a fleet of ~30 Rotax Falkes for £2M derisks the chance of failure and being no further forward this time next year in 2017 (which I suspect is 50/50 likely). This could see a return to Swansea, Newtonards, Kinloss Abingdon and Halton - all areas screaming out for Air Cadet flying with large numbers of Cadets to get flying that have a potential mahoosive journey to their nearest on current plans. The AEF expansion is a joke as we simply don't have the pilots as we expand Typhoon and P-8 capabilities. Also, Babcock won't be giving the flying time away for free - so channel the cash into buying Rotax Falkes. The serviceability of the Tutor is a nightmare - look at your average UAS/AEF and it has 6-7 on its books; how many would you expect to see flyable at a weekend - 4 if you are lucky! If these were civvy reg Grob 115Es at a flying club being looked after by a Part M, then I would expect to see 5-6 ready to fly. Applying MAA regs to small light aircraft (on the civvy register!) and gliders is killing us in money, time and availability.
Why has the Air Force buried its head in the sand? We need airminded people for our 5th Generation Air Force that we are trying to build - without a way to get more youngsters flying we just won't have the right people in future. It's going to be hard going to build the extra Typhoon and P-8 sqns with the ever dwindling aircrew cadre we have on the books.
LJ