RAF Chinooks - Mali

[Yammer]

Following todays meeting between May and Macron the BBC report

"Other commitments being unveiled include the deployment of three RAF Chinook helicopters in Mali, where French forces are fighting Islamist militants, and France sending more troops to reinforce a British contingent in Estonia on Nato's border with Russia."

[wezgulf3]

Good to see our guys and girls getting stretched a little more!!

Wes...

[Thunder]

That's what they get paid for.

[wezgulf3]

That's what they get paid for.

I am aware of that, but we don't have the forces we had 15 years ago! Its not fair to keep cutting the services and still expect the crews to work at a capacity we once could do with ease.

Wes...

[Thunder]

But we're not working at the capacity we were 15 years ago or even two years ago, unless I'm mistaken there isn't any current overseas operations affecting the RAF except for Op Shader Tornados/Typhoons, which again are operating at a far less tempo than the Tornado/Harrier did during Telic and Herrick deployments.

[Evalu8ter]

Thunder,
You are mistaken. There are other dets going on, some not in the public eye and others partially so (Op Toral with Pumas in Kabul for example). The Chinook force is still recovering from a decade of high-tempo, kinetic, combat operations which saw over 20 DFCs awarded and some people completing over a dozen deployments. Since returning from Afg, the crews have been busy regenerating skills not used in Afg, and providing much publicised relief to the hurricane struck Caribbean. All of this takes the guys and girls away from their loved ones. And now they’re off again. I flew the Chinook for 15 years; yes, we’re paid for it, but it’s not why most of us do it. Burnout, stress and the emotional difficulty of continually saying goodbye is hard, believe me......