There is a need for some non-flying tours. After 11 years of non-stop FL FJ flying I needed a break, so a 3 year ground tour in flight safety was just the break and change I needed. If we don't have a suite of interesting non-flying jobs for our aircrew then we run the risk of burning them out. To be quite honest, even an instructor tour on a phase 2 trg unit would not have provided the break away that I felt I needed to support my family.
I think there are around 2,000 officer aircrew and 1,000 non-commissioned aircrew in the RAF. With only around 500 airframes to fly, then the numbers are probably about right at 6:1 if you consider that on average there are 2 aircrew per aircraft. If you man your Sqn about 2 crews to every airframe then that allows for a spare crew in the ground post system.
As for MFTS, there are pluses and minuses. We bought a system of trg that was designed to deliver aircrew pre a decision to buy more aircraft in SDSR15. So that means that the trg system is very very taught. Also, we were railroaded into buying Hawk T2 with a bang seat that has a crew weight limitation of 14kgs less than the T1 - so that means that the larger youths of today can't train on T2 even though they would easily meet the bang seat limits for Typhoon. We also have the Phenom which I understand has an issue with Cranwell's runway length if it uses the anti-icing system and wants to fly close to MAUM. There is the debacle of the Jupiter/Juno helos beinng too small for rear crew trg and so we'll likely have to buy something else in addition. No-one expected to do WSO(Nav) trg again, but now with Poseidon, Protector, Rivet Joint and E3D all needing Navs then WSO(Nav) trg will need to start again. Then there is the proposed shoehorning of everything into Cranwell, WIttering and Valley - it's just about feasible on paper but then in practice it will not work when slot times slip. However, I'm with Bob Viking in that we'll make it work, but we don't half make it difficult for ourselves!!!
iRaven