Audi,

:rolleyes: I just love the way I grate on you:ok:

all spelling mistakes are "df" alcohol induced

What we really need to start with is a couple of political parties, made up of people who believe in what they say, make sure what they say is accurate, and who are willing to be responsible for **** ups when they happen.

I spent years being told how amazing it was that we live in a democracy, and how hard women had fought to get the right to vote. Years of being told that it was my responsibility to vote.

Do I? No.

What reason is there to vote when all of the parties trot out as many promises as they can to get votes, to then do nothing, or to very blatently go against public opionion? Some how I think those women would have saved themselves the bother of protesting if they knew what a spineless bunch we have as politicians today.

As I understand it the officers in our armed forces are expected to act on the principles of honesty, integrity, and courage. Without these qualities those under them would be far less likely to follow orders, mostly due to a lack of trust. Surely their political masters owe them the same?

George Robertson wasn't a bad Defence Secretary. (Better than Portillo, probably). Hoon's a tosser. Sandy's (Tory) Defence Review was far worse even than this one. This one's doing more damage than 'Options' or 'Front Line First', however.

New Labour and the Tories are, as Proone suggests, just as bad as each other, and to pretend otherwise is to ignore reality. Moreover, to say so doesn't make on a New Labour apologist, it just makes one a realist.

Cuts and Overstretch
 

If we were all sitting around drinking tea and having every Wedsnesday afternoon off to play sports, I could see why the cuts would be justified. But as the last 5 years have easily been the busiest of my RAF career (not as lengthy as BEagle's but 18 years nonetheless) I still don't see any logic bar cost cutting in any of the measures taken in the Review.

Since 1999 the RAF has taken part in: Kosovo (Allied Force), Kosovo and Bosnia (Deliberate Forge), Mozambique, DROC, Afghanistan, Horn Of Africa operations, Iraq (OSW, ONW, Telic Phase III and IV), whilst of course maintaining QRA in the UK and a huge presence in the FI (some 800 personnel), Cyprus, NI....

I've probably missed a few here; apologies to any chaps involved in something not listed above. I merely point out that our greatest resource has always been our people - can we keep up the rate of ops as described above and keep our personnel motivated and ready to go? Hmmmm......

SBG

So Mr 16 Blades, you are now ducking??? So you should!
I agree that things are tough now, but I really would like you to retract some of your comments. I actually feel insulted!!
I left in January after 24 years loyal worldwide service, mostly in the SH Force as groundcrew, then aircrew. It was not a case of couldn't hack it!! Or selfish Goals!! Or lack of committment!! The SH Force were doing long detachments years ago, I hardly saw my eldest son in his first year. We all just got on with it. A lot of us left because we were not prepared to continue to work for this administration. Quite simply, I did not trust my little (well not so little) pink bottom in the hands of Mr Blair. Because of this, I did not bleat on about how bad things were, I just left. Selfish? I took an £18,000 pay cut for my beliefs. By all means have a go at the people who say 'we had it worse' but don't insult all of us who left......

I can fully understand the sentiments being expressed by CatpainCaveman, Mr 16 Blades and others. It very obvious that Blair couldn’t careless about the welfare or of the morale of HM Forces. However I must support jayteeto it is not just only of late that the Forces have been subjected to overstretch or expected to do the job without the support being in place. I left the Army in 1989 after 22 years service. In the early 70s. I was with REME supporting the AAC. During that period I spent Christmas in Northern Ireland on an Op Banner tour to be followed by a six week Sky Warrior Exercise on the Otterburn Training area. This was followed by another Christmas away in Belize with three Sioux Helicopters “preventing” Guatemala from taking over the country. This was followed by another tour in NI. I hardly ever saw my kids in two years. When back at base, although we were not supposed to work overtime, the flying tasks continued to be accepted regardless of the maintenance workload. The Flight Commander still had all his aircraft to complete these tasks. At the end of the 70s I was involved in bringing the Lynx into Squadron Service in BAOR. The manning of Technicians to support this aircraft had been based on Westland’s “sales” talk regarding the manhours required per flying hours and as expected had been totally underestimated. The technicians were working round the clock to maintain the aircraft. On the first field exercise we ended up with 4 unserviceable aircraft stuck outside of 4 different villages being repaired. As usual the aircraft had been introduced without all the support being available. The point I am making is that overstretch, logistic and support equipment shortages are not a new words in the Forces vocabulary. However the main difference is that we are now talking about more and more Operations than Exercises and that is totally unacceptable.

As Mr 16 Blades stated

“it is done nowadays, with great personal sacrifice and pride in our own professionalism which dictates that we MUST succeed at whatever foolhardy and poorly-thought-out venture is thrown our way, regardless of the lack of money / equipment / support we have. “

Well it is not just nowadays, the services have always performed in such a manner. Perhaps that is the trouble we mask the problems. I believe most of the time these people do not realise the effort the boys put in to meet the demands. Although their airships should as they must have been there themselves at some

As we've proven more than once, technology may well make a significant contribution to winning the war but, as anyone who's been anywhere in the last 10 years should have noticed, it's manpower that wins the peace. Saw it in Kosovo and Bosnia and again in Iraq. Whatever is said about the infantry when they're causing havoc in barracks, they do a top job when the bricks are being thrown.

Unfortunately all those MPs who come out to operational theatres just see the guys in their lines and ask if the "food's all right?, Post getting through? Good, good", pick up a bottle of duty free then fly back to Westminster. All this creates is hassle. The guys have to sweep the sand off the desert, paint the roads black and kerbs white rather than getting their heads down or being allowed to get on with their primary role. You could get away with this with more troops bbut it ain't gonna happen because the visitors don't get to see the overstretch because that would mean them putting themselves closer to danger than the risk of chocking on a bone in their smoked salmon sandwich (no crusts of course).

Do you think the Govt will do anything about the recent report stating that there are far too few troops on the ground in Iraq at the moment? I'm not confident. Why? Because they're all insulated from the bad stuff that might give them nightmares. Let's face it, Defence budgets never won votes. The people want more unemployment benefit, better medical care and schools. Rather than cutting the massive administrative budgets of all these departments and having to pay them unemploymeny benefit, if there's such a small identifiable direct threat to the UK, we become the target.

Unfortunately the Govt haven't figured out that in a conflict of almost any kind there have to be immediate reserves, especially as it seesm the training time has increased exponentially with technological advances. 6-7 hours in a Spitfire and then plunged into battle...?

The armed forces will (hopefully) never (have to) be a profit-making organisation but I'm sure that someday in the relatively near future someone's going to look at our increasingly limited capability and decide that we can fulfil no role whatsoever and we should all seek alternative employment...but it'll be the fault of successive Govts, not the one that makes the decision.

I have a deep distrust of all politicians (including our immediate masters) and I'd love to know what some of them really do and what they aim to achieve by their jobs but this was started a long time ago.

Are they not 80% of the way there anyway, what with all the budget holders that each RAF station has (and I assume that the Army and RN are the same). The only difference is that our budget holders are not accountants (yet) and will never make a profit, just penny-pinch wherever and whenever.

Please see my post in More Defence Cuts Planned.

Sadly I do not think we will get anywhere with our chats here.

There are two types of person in the RAF (and prob the army and Navy as well).

The first are people that post here on Prune. They express an opinion, are proud and very loyal in their beliefs. They work hard and place others before themselves.

Then there is the rest who sit back and keep quite, until the time is right to say "THE RIGHT THING". They have no loyalty, only agree with what the current PC system dictates and worst still they smirk at people like us.

Having spent 44 years in the Air Force (17 as kid with his old man & 27 in the mob) I have seen real change - and not for the good.

Sadly I see that more people of the second catergory appear to be in the nest these days deciding PC policy and sucking up to Politicians.

Am I right or just old/wrong and $$$$?? off.

27 years...get some time in:p

Whilst I applaud your sentiment I am sure that a good few of those who post here are the same "faceless monkees" who capitulate on a daily basis when times are getting hard for their troops:}

Sqn Boss........no names no pack drills etc........having recieved a PVR from one of the finest, most loyal and hard working guys I have had the pleasure to work with in my 30 years toil was heard to remark.........."we can afford to lose a few"

To move onwards and upwards one assumes you don't rock the boat...................lord help us all:}

all spelling mistakes are "df" alcohol induced

16 Blades

Your comments concerning retired servicemen and women are insulting. You have as you say, every right to get things off your chest, so do they.

Service life has been demanding for everyone over the last 40 years, and it is still demanding today. Do not mention selfish goals to me , when as a pilot in the SH force spending nine months of the year away from home, i sweated blood and tears for the RAF, and it cost me my family, relationship etc etc. When i decided it was time to move on, I did so quietly, I was sent away on detachment when it should have been my dining out from the airforce(and went on said detachment without bitching and moaning). You have it hard now (as everyone does) but do not belittle the efforts and sacrifices of your predecessors.

Just because people leave does not imply that they can't cut it or they are disloyal. Like many of my peer group who have left, cut me through the middle and you would find a roundel. Your statement

quote:

"Fair enough if you decided you couldn't hack it anymore, but please don't preach to those of use who have the gumption and commitment to stick it out"

Does your 'gumption and commitment' include the numerous people I have spoken to, who are unhappy with their lot, and when I say 'why don't you leave', i get retorts such as 'well i can't really, who else would pay me this well in civvy street', Or even worse 'I'm just going to stick it out so the RAF will pay my kids boarding school allowance'. Is that the sort of 'selfless people' you are talking about when you accuse the rest of us of pursuing our own 'selfish goals'?

to finish with your statement 'well it had to be said' - but i'm not ducking

Too often in my 36 years in the RAF "Can do attitude" meant "My men can do and I can get promoted". Nowhere could I find a senior officer prepared to say "No can do" even though many had protested that the job could not possibly be done if manning was reduced. How could they expect to be believed after that?

Unfortunately, the service is now staffed by people at the top who would never have got there if their competing peers had stayed in and it is unlikely that any of these would be listened to even if they did have the gumption to make a stand against reduction of capability.

However, a hypothetical question for the few at the top who might still care 'What would you advise the Defence minister if he asked you to mount an operation to retake the Falklands from the Argies after they seized it back in 2008'? Would the answer be 'Can do'?

Soddim,
How painfully accurate your words are. Our third of the J cadre are, to quite a bl@@dy nice Flt Cdr, currently bleeding:}

Having been further tasked with providing a Guard Cdr our upper echelon were advised that something would have to give to make this so. Advice from the Boss................I know it's painful but just get on with it:sad:

Stars is a wonderful thing and allows all of us to see what each section is up to. Our sister Sqn's are currently heading west on a more frequent basis and no jealousy I hasten to add. However all frames are carrying at least double crews...........one has 17 CREW and 3 GE's but as it is off to as far west in the good old US as you can go........ nice one dudes:ok

With our blindingly obvious manpower surplus why are those with blindingly obvious manpower surplus not picking up the niff naff etc.............cos despite our protestations if a Boss rejects something, whatever it is,............. the next rung just slips slowly out of sight:rolleyes:

Still only 8 years to go till the new pension scheme and PA spine see me into retirement:ok:

all spelling mistakes are "df" alcohol induced