Sky Sports

Could it be, and by God I hope it is, that this massive cull of bases is a roll of the dice by NPAS? Designed to cause such shock and uproar, that the Home Office has to step in and bail them out?!?!

On the topic of predictions, here is mine.
In 3-5 years time police aviation will go out to tender. The whole shooting match, a/c, bases, personnel etc. One lump sum from the Home Office to provide air support for the whole of the country. The winning bidder will look at the NPAS operating model, with its southern bias, and deem it unworkable. There will then be a series of new bases opening! How will they make it work? Simply because they will be aviation experts, not bobbies playing at businessmen/politicians.

Sky Sports

To be fair to them, it wasn't them who pissed it up the wall 10 years ago. They are only trying to pick up the pieces, still.

yme

That is not quite the case, it was down to the absurd calculations and assumptions made by police officers (very likely good at Policing) who had no idea how to run this type of organisation. NPAS ended up with such a large over spend, they are having to decimate the service to an extent it will inevitably fail, just to get back on an even keel.

The failure of the fixed wing trial,
Fixed wing to come on line to cover the gaps,
Dispatch centre,
The Henlow gap,
The Met.

You could not make this stuff up!

Rotate too late

Can I ask what the fixed wing will be doing? I'm assuming that it will be called to an incident and loiter, if so what are its weather limits compared to its sights and sensor capabilities? Is it included in the new list? Cheers
RTL

Art of flight

YME,


Hello me old mate, sad news for all at the unit. You've suffered from a lack of a voice at the top table and a neighbour that's just close enough and with a few big voices.


Still, I guess we'll be hearing of mass resignations from the leadership any minute now........yep, any minute now.......oh well.


Wait for the next great missive......half a dozen fixed wing can do it all, it was the grand plan all along, hang on though, aren't they closing Wattisham base with it's fully serviced runway/ILS/Fire service/Fuel etc? Thought that'd be just right for a regional base to fly planks from?

Sky Sports

It just got 17,853 Km2 bigger

Coconutty

I'm pleased to see that NPAS Birmingham survived as I'll soon be paying my Taxes to the local Council there,
but it seems fairly obvious that there will be even less time spent over the West Midlands
area as the aircraft gets pulled further away, more often.

Anyway, once the dust has settled, the survivors, and more particularly their "Airwave Rep's ( you know who you are - Nozzer ! ),
might want to start asking a few questions of the NPAS Procurements Department, as to whether anyone
is providing an expert input into the new technology planned to REPLACE Airwave within a couple of years

From what I've heard, the "plan" IS to replace Airwave with a new Emergency Services Network contract,
based on the 4G Mobile Phone Network - which is good for handling data,
but at present cannot handle Voice communications

Those old enough to remember will recall that when Airwave was first dreamt up,
they forgot to consider airborne use at all, and had to cobble things together to get it to work !

Today there are still ongoing issues with Airwave that were never resolved for the airborne user.

They wouldn't forget again - would they ???

With NPAS introducing more FW's to the Fleet, it will be essential that the new Network
not only accommodates airborne use, but also the increased use at higher altitudes that the FW's operate at.

I really do hope that someone at NPAS has a handle on this

Woowooneenor

Straight from the NPAS website:

The National Police Air Service has confirmed plans to move to a 15-base model | NPAS

Going from 23 rotary current model to 19 rotary and 4 fixed wing apparently. Not as bad as gossip suggested

Woowooneenor

The National Police Air Service has confirmed plans to move to a 15-base model | NPAS

RotorPig

RIP 20 minute circles!

Art of flight

Made me laugh there Coco, have they even got airwave working yet? The cause of more bad language in the cab than any other subject.


As for the planks operating higher, has anyone asked the met office if they can raise the cloud base in the future to allow such a thing.....I take it the TFO's will still need to see the ground to do the job, even in a fixed wing?


Guess there's going to be an awful lot of transit IFR/IMC to cloud break to VMC/VFR to get the jobs done.


RotorP.........just use a bigger coffee mug for the new circles......or a smaller map.

Sky Sports

Would love to see a new map with the fabled 20 minute circles drawn around the surviving bases. My guess is it would really highlight the north/south devide.
Over to you guys, (who are good at that sort of thing!)

RichiePAO

Well with all these cuts in cover, I do hope the Forces are paying a whole lot less..........it was only three years ago that Forces that I worked with could get around 500 hours of EFFECTIVE air support for around £1/2 m. Now for a similar price they get naff all.
Fixed wing will be a total waste of time in the weather we had last night when I was out. There will be day after when weather effects ops in some way or another and short of using Typhoons the transit times will be too long to be effective to dynamic jobs, like the 100 mph pursuit my team and I had through 3 Forces the other week where the nearest aircraft never got there due to distance to travel......
Don't get me wrong, NPAS had to happen in some way shape or form, however in three years one of the worlds most effective air support provision with national coverage has been destroyed......

MaxR

I'm truly upset for you guys and girls still involved in police air support. There were many who said that I was a pessimistic naysayer - or words to that effect - when I gave my opinion three years ago. Where are they today? This is far worse than I ever believed it might be.

Digital flight deck

Silsoe, no point of view?

SilsoeSid

Something like this;

Sky Sports

Just as I thought, massive overlaps in the south with some areas being covered by 4 bases and bugger all in the East.
Benson or Filton needs to close and reopen in Kings Lynn for starters.

Since it's no longer national, maybe a new name is in order? With the 6 aircraft around London and the bias to the South East, can I suggest......'Police Force Aviation Region South East' or, Police FARSE for short.

SilsoeSid

Sky Sports, I think you'll find the word you're after is spelt with a 'C'

Unless of course you really did mean;

'farse (fɑːs) (ecclesiastical)
noun
an explanatory paraphrase inserted into Latin liturgy
verb (transitive)
to insert an explanatory paraphrase into (liturgy)'

backtothebeat

There are lots and lots of bobbies who ARE (police)aviation experts...!
Unfortunately where NPAS failed was that they didnt take on any of these people on nor did they listen to those who were able to advise upon such matters.

Pilots are not managers nor do they have the public responsibility and accountability that is needed to run POLICE aviation. Yes aviation input is required when necessary. However the tail should not wag the dog.

So to those out there saying this is the fault of Police Officers playing at aviation.... wind your neck in.

Police Officers were succesfully (in the main) running the units well before NPAS came along and knocked it all down. Your criticism needs to be directed towards Senior Officers within Policing who decided to tear apart what was a very effective service, and who have at best been hoodwinked by major industry players, or at worst been offered nice jobs post-retirement should certain contracts be signed. I hope it is not the latter.
The Police Officers in the individual units were the very people who built the service into what we are all lamenting now...! It is they (and the Pilots working with them), who had the expertise and the knowledge of what worked and what didnt. Sadly none of that mattered in the end.

NPAS has shown itself to be as inept, short sighted, and badly run as everyone on the inside said it was going to be, and the rewards for that ineptitude are now about to be realised.

NPAS did not HAVE to happen.
Those units who were slacking through lack of will or lack of demand, and only flying 600 hours a year or so, needed to either pull their socks up or close. The remaining units should have worked together better, stopped paying through the nose for engineering with PAS/Mac and followed the lead of others and set up or shared engineering with those doing it at a fraction of the cost. Regionalising the units would have achieved better results with far fewer losses of airframes/units.

My flying career ended with NPAS.
To the observers about to join me back on the streets... you have my commiserations. As you are about to experience how poor things have truly become, and you will realise how rare it is nowadays to have an a/c actually on a job with you.

Likewise to the Pilots out there, past and present who I have worked with, may I thank you for my ten years of safe flying. I never once felt that you were anything less than excellent at what you do... I wish you lots of luck in your future endeavours.
(well there was that one time.... anyway not important)

Sky Sports

It was bttb.

I know, Sid, just couldn't find a 'C' word that fitted!