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I'll move the funding over as well.

Yes, we paid attention to those - especially as the "All over the place" crowd occasionally made "minor math errors", like the time in Pet where I gave a "drop 50 fire for effect" order for a target about 2K ahead of us during an AOP shoot, and just barely caught the smoke and dust puff out of...

"GTL"?

I am, sadly, one of those "not shocked anymore" people - as this is too common (once is too common). I am no less - and perhaps actually more - disgusted with each occurrence, though.

I take it that they remembered to unchain the tailboom of the rear-most Griffon before lowering the ramp this time.

When I become God Emperor, I shall correct the current Liberal travesty and return Tac Hel to its original, historical, and rightful place. MH as well.

444 Squadron was a 4 CMBG unit, like any other, with a dotty line to 10 TAG HQ for such things as aircrew and tech training, flying and maint standards, flight safety etcetera. While a somewhat less-than-perfect arrangement, it was much, much better operationally. The "RCAF" has not existed as...

I was never worried about them, or any other dedicated AD equipment. Our tactical limits were skids clear of ground and one-half rotor diameter from vertical obstacles. There would be plenty of treelines, villages, and cows between them and us, and there were only a handful of ZSUs, SA-9s, and...

Yes. Read mine as well. If you down-rank positions and pay people less, while maintaining the same workloads and levels of responsibility, you are going to lose all of the ones who are skilled, talented, motivated, trained, and experienced enough to attract the attentions of commercial...

Yes - pay people even less to do more work. Absolutely brilliant retention programme.

I like the realism when Tom jerks forwards as he changes gears.

Creating the positions is easy. Funding them is not. As for recruiting, give them decent equipment (not a CF tradition, unfortunately) and the same hotel accommodations as your aircrew . . .

Back to 444 Squadron in the Glory Days of the Cold War . . . We had that problem, and more. We had almost as many aircraft and vehicles as people, and some trades were only one person deep. Our single Safety Systems Tech (to use the terminology of the time) had to maintain helmets and survival...

Don't buy an extra squadron of F35s . . . ?

If that was post-1989, it wasn't really.

Eggs? In 444 Squadron, during Fallexes, those of us in the two flying flights had to hard-boil all of our own eggs on Sunday evenings before deploying forward on Monday mornings (German law banned all military noise during weekends) lest they all be crushed during our twice-daily speed-packs and...

Really? How much time have you spent in a mechanized brigade group, which also, by the way, has to function as part of a higher formation? There are more moving parts - human and mechanical - that have to be co-ordinated in a mechanized brigade group than in an F35 squadron. I will admit...

Neither can a mechanized brigade group.

Just the youngest and freshest . . . But, no, I was less than completely serious.

The Mulroney government put a lot of effort into its Defence White Paper, and I still have my copy buried in a box somewhere in one of three locations. There's a foreword from Perrin Beatty - the absolute best Defence Minister in my time - in it, in which he mentions discussions with a number...