sunday times and sentinal comments

[14greens]

Apologise for not being able to quote exactly the comment, but was annoyed and horrified by the article in the Times last sunday 15 Feb regarding lack of trained crews for the sentinal and the fact the sqn is not able to declare full op capability until they have a full compliment of crews which will take them in to next year. obviously journo's do not want to take in to account that you cannot train crews overnight, and they have to make a story from nothing BUT the final line of the article stated "and another Royal Marine was killed this week" as if lack of sentinel cover was the cause!

It is obvious its RAF bashing month at the moment in the press but this comment was totally out of context with regards to the crew training lead in time and more importantly bloody disrespectfull of the bloke who gave his life out there!

For any journo's out there who may read this forum, show the respect due and at last try to make stories re equipment relevant

[Training Risky]

Anyone on the Sqn care to elaborate what's causing the delay in producing CR crews? Groundstations? Cans of Slimfast in the galley? Airborne sensors...?

[L J R]

Journos twisting the story as usual

Suspect that crew training is on track for the PLANNED in service date. Possibly in service 'early' as a political stunt.....Just 'cos someone stated that the jet is now 'in-serivce', doesn't mean that the entire planned capabilty eg time on stn, exploitation, deployment, etc exists to full / planned capacity yet - because the bean counters want it, and any capability is better than none while you wait for 'full capability' doesn't mean that the plan is going off the rails.....It is like that over here on the S/W Pacific too.