Not a good idea?

[ropebag]

Thing is that military flying should in some ways be more challenging and interesting in someways - deploying overseas, deploying to a FOB for a week, help saving lives on EAS detachment, support to AGS with GASU (catching bad guys), working with ARW, NVG, etc - in order to aid keeping morale high.

The other part of it is that the military is a young persons game (balanced with getting return on the investment)

that is, from this side of the water, the exact encapsulation of the AC's retention problem - its day to day operations look exactly like what a pilot/tech would do in the outside world, so why would someone do the same job for far less money?

the carrot of military service is going to interesting places to do interesting things, and being challenged in a way that simply isn't available in the commercial sector - without that, its just another job, but one with shit money and the chance of doing a really boring job in a complete dump.

the retention problem would be massively mitigated if the AC offered its people excitement, challenge, and being at the cutting edge of developing capability. if it doesn't, then you're recruiting the wrong people...

[GoneToTheCanner]

Ropebag is right; civilian orgs can deliver what was exclusively military; heavy loads slinging, SAR, surveillance(which encompasses many things), maintenance of military aircraft (ejection seats/weapons/surveillance kit/training of pilots). NVG is no longer exclusive to the Military in many countries. If you look at the UK, C130s overhauled by Marshalls, Hawks serviced and turned around by civvies at Valley, Cobhams doing naval exercises and dozens of other tasks. By those standards alone, the Don is liable to be reduced to a Govt jet operation/ SF support role/air ambulance airlift/direct Army support, the last of which I suspect will be farmed out to the Brigades directly, in line with common international practise.

[sofa]

Lads there are two reasons you join the public service, from the RIC/DMP who were not far off the same money as the lockout strikers they were fighting to the present day CS, Job security and the big one, the gold plated Pension, some jobs in the private sector that are paying big money do not come any were near the job security or pensions in the CS, Use the Irish Pension Board Pension calculator to see how much a private sector worker has to save out of his wages each week to get the equivalent of a public service pension. Are the lads in the Don falling for the big talk that use to go on in the 50's and 60's when the lads came back from England in a borrowed suit.

[irishrgr]

Lads,

Joining this discussion a bit late.........civvies are very "normal" over here, especially in Army aviation. At the Army Flight School, 70% of the flight instructors are civilian contractors, about the same for the maintenance of the flight school helis. Of the maintainers in our AVN BDE, 40% of them are civvies on contract. It's been that way for years because it's cheaper. When I went through SERE, other than the commander, NCOIC, personnel SGT and one doctor, the entire staff, instructors, trainers, medics, drivers were contractors. Some we ex DoD, some wern't. It's become the new normal.

We have the same "brain drain" arguments over here, in IT, AVN and Intelligence. Lads/lasses join, get all the certs, training, etc and feck off to the private sector for more money, less hours, no duties. Granted, they'll get no pension at the end of it, but most 22 year olds can't seem to think that far ahead. Overseas, 90% of our vehicle maintenance was contractors, only thing they didn't do was come with us on patrols, that was the luck of the Army mechanics. Most of our non tactical heli support was contractors to include aircraft, pilots, tech's the lot. We had contractors running IT, running most of the classified systems, piloting fixed wing ELINT planes the lot.

The IAC have opened themselves to a dangerous threat....for whatever reason, all the foot dragging over SAR, deploying away from the Don, the attitude of certain parts of the IAC (at all ranks) is coming home to bite. A well thought out tender could make a large part of the IAC irrelevant, especially in a fiscally challenged environment. To quote GEN Sullivan "If you don't like relevancy, you will like irrelevancy even less". As the rotary wing element of the IAC doesn't really have a kinetic element (no attack heli's etc), one of the larger heli companies could easily make a strong business case for supplying 24/7 rotary wing support to DoD complete with green heli's etc. The IAC would be in a very difficult place to rebut this....can't say "we need to build the skill base to support overseas missions in hostile environments, Army operations, etc" as the IAC has a very small mission set.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a advocate for blue/green suiters, but in these fiscally constrained times, any organization has to be able to show strong VFM. Hopefully ADM Mellett will be able to steer the organization through these issues successfully.

A

[DeV]

Here's what the outsourced maintenance tender for the GASU helos looked like in c2008:

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase_docs.asp?PID=19560&LID=19560

Here's what the outsourced "Support By The Hour" for the GASU helos looked like in c2008:

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase_docs.asp?PID=19932&LID=19932

[meridian]

Has there been any further update on this "proposed" change to maintenance that is not opsec, and how it may or may not affect the operational output of the AC, both from Bal and off base operations? It's been mentioned before that the AC have a portable hanger that can be used for field-based maintenance. Is much of this type of in the field maintenance training practised, and would the change proposed have a significant effect on such maintenance?