Silber....call the nurse....your meds are wearing off!

£30K retainer and £1K per day on ops. Is this some Tom Clancy novel? People always talk about these jobs and fatastic salaries, but having met some of the 'contract pilots', it isn't that fantastic. It would be great if you could sit down the pub waiting for your pager to go off and the next big op to happen. Do the people on the £30K retainer drive round in a large black van with a red stripe down the side and tell you that they "love it when a plan comes together"?

Realistically, if such a job existed, I would be the first in the queue - no staffwork and trying to gain ground in 'merit' based promotion and just the chance to fly. Sign me up.

And if that sort of cash were available, why you'd have helicopter pilots buying castles! The very thought of it! ;)

Bearing in mind the aeronautical nature of the work described, might they stuggle with their colleague who "Ain't gettin' on no plane, fool!" ? :}

Regardless of anyone's opinion of Col T (or should that be Mr T...:E ), it is a very good thing indeed that someone with his high military profile and public persona continues to bang the "overstretch" drum.

Can any of us really object to that - if he wasn't then perhaps the media would not be giving it quite the same high profile. This needs to be a constant refrain aimed at Ministers/the PM.

I am not really bothered that much about Col T's personal motives, everything he says echoes true at the front line.

Col T is indeed banging on the correct drum and it is just a drum that people don't want to hear because we have banged it so much. The Defence Secretary recently said that he acknowledged that Army units' deployments were going outside the Harmony guidelines, but he didn't offer anything as respite. Soundbites like 'more pain for the families' - can I claim my divorce costs on JPA?

However, are there any jobs going out there with the black van and red stripe? So long as the dodgy company doesn't use JPA.

"In 2006 a crack commando unit was given community service by a military court for a crime the RAF Police didn't detect. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security crewroom to the London Underground. Today, still wanted by PSF, they survive as airmen of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else is willing to accept the contract for such a ludicrously low price, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the JPA-Team."

CS, you should work on the radio (FM).... :D

Would they give me the black van and the £30K retainer?

The black van or one of the four? (scroll down a bit)
http://www.tvacres.com/license_AB.htm

http://www.ateamshrine.co.uk/gallery/image16.jpg

I take it there has only been one 'careful' owner?

Does this mean Col Tim is Hannibal? I hope I get the job. £30K retainer, £1K a day on ops...

Google blackwaterusa .:suspect:

Blackwater only employ US nationals. For their helicopters, they like ex 160th SOAR people anyway.

Thats what it says up front (US citizen), but if you take a look at their job application questionaire, it seems a bit ambivalent? Maybe depends what skills they need at the time?

Q21a) Other Skills: Can you hide on a traditional mid-West farm in the company of the pneumatically enhanced 20-something blonde who has just inherited said property but knows nothing about real estate and, using nothing more than a Leatherman, a few oil drums, some rope, a pitch fork, a Zippo lighter and an aersol of hairspray, a length of chain and a manhole cover, transfrom a partly dismantled Bell47 in to Airwolf, then proceed to strafe the offices of an unscrupulous property developer who wants to turn said mid-West farm in to a casino/coal mine/interstate, expending over 30,000 rounds in the process but without actually killing or even injuring anyone?
Q21b) Have you got a black van with a red stripe down the side? If it's a red car with a white stripe please apply to Huggy Investigative Solutions.

Answers:

Q21a) Yes.

Q21b) No, but I am willing to trade in my existing vehicle.

Gainesy - are you looking for a job then?

No thanks, could probably find a temporary position for a 20-something blonde though.

That's where I'll fall down as I prefer my brunette, she's much better than any blonde. I don't think she'll go for the black van either, so I really prefer the £30K retainer and £1K per day on ops.

Part 2 (Well done on getting this far by the way)
Q21c) Do you have a friend with a vast collection of "bling" about his person, preferably a biggish chap, in to his body building, insists on cutting the sleeves off everything he wears from t-shirt to tuxedo, Afro-Amercan in ethnicity, who on the outside appears frighteningly aggresive and outwardley hostile to everyone but who is, in fact, a bit of a big old softie at heart?
Ask him, maybe he's got a suitable van.

Bingo. Sounds like a plug from Col Tim.

Ex-officers pushing the companies they now work for for military contract work, how unusual.:rolleyes: