Readiness of Military Forces at an all time high!

Article taken from www.mod.uk

The MOD response to the Public Accounts Committee report into military readiness reveals that on average in 2005 75% of forces had met their planned level of readiness without serious or critical weakness. This already exceeds the Public Service Agreement to obtain 73 per cent by 2008. No UK forces are reporting a high risk they could not be made ready within agreed timescales.

Adam Ingram said:

"During 2005 the Armed Forces showed steady improvement in readiness and I am delighted to announce that since the publication of the Public Accounts Committee's report we have exceeded the demanding Public Sector Agreement target made with the treasury - two years early.

The unit i am serving on in the FAA is chronicaly undermanned, is no where near a state of readiness. Are they selecting certain stats as ever or just blatantly spinning a bad dit. Blair never!! 8O

 

"Measure what's important, don't make important what you can easily measure"

Unfortunately, our current Lords (it could be you for a fee ) and Masters have never heard this piece of wisdom and continue to abuse statistics to demonstrate how wonderful they are while reality demonstrates otherwise. Its not just the MOD where over-simplistic numbers are used.... look at schools, e.g. SATs tests and GCSEs, the NHS, the economy etc.

 

All pigs fed and ready for take-off!

But seriously
The actual statement quoted above is a classic example of using 62 words to actually say sweet FA. A ship in dry dock manages to meet its "planned readiness level", as the docking was planned.

 

Of course it does. The real question, and the one that the polititians will always shy away from is are we buying enough capability in our armed forces to meet the commitments we the government ask of them. I think most of th time the answer to that is no.

I suspect that at present our forces are severely over committed. You can get away with this for short perios, the forces are 'can do' organisations, but in time the chickens come home to roost, people leave and the people who leave are those with the key technical and leadership capabilities. Equipment becomes clapped out and unserviceable, and before to long you do have real trouble.

Peter

 

Do they still operate what used to be called the RMS (Reduced Manning Standard)?
One frigate I served in, had a company of 243, but should have had 265 - perhaps this 'operational' readiness that MOD looks at ?

 

fully manned unit with alot of people called GAPPED (think Centurion would be suspicious) or a new uniformed personell called SERCO. That's how we get fully manned nowadays. Maybe our new human rights lawyer/ex Treasury/ex Immigration minister, Secretary of state for defence might help. Or maybe i will win the lottery tonight!!

 

Well fellas, if you're struggling for manpower there's always us old farts around. Some of us would be willing to help out where we could. Assuming you are still operating CVS T23 and T42's then whats still rattling around in my head could be of use to you.

Who said the old farts in here were no use ? You're still running with the stuff we ran with and probably using the procedures we developed and wrote !