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ANNEX A TO DOP 528/69
(Preliminary Draft)
Continued
14. Withdrawal of the RAF Regiment Flight. The RAF Regiment
Flight, with a strength of 41 all ranks, is responsible for the
security of Kai Tak airfield and the Tai Mo Shan radar installation.
If the unit were withdrawn this role could be taken over by an Army
unit in Kowloon but at the expense of its own IS role.
15.
Withdrawal of the RAF Air Flight.
The RAF Air Flight is re-
sponsible for the loading and unloading of RAF transport aircraft
and the processing of Service sponsored passengers and freight.
These tasks must be carried out and civilianisation of this unit,
even if practicable, would be unlikely to result in significant
savings.
16. Summary.
It can be seen from Appendix 2 that even if all the
additional measures were implemented the annual savings would be
£104,200 budgetary and £203,700 overseas expenditure. This would
leave an annual shortfall of £32,800 in the required budgetary savings,
but would achieve a surplus of £187,900 in overseas expenditure.
However, in view of the operational and administrative penalties we
cannot recommend the implementation of any of these measures.
We
therefore re-examine the operational justification for the additional
helicopters.
OPERATIONAL JUSTIFICATION FOR ADDITIONAL HELICOPTERS
17. The operational justification for the additional helicopters
has already been stated (1) but we consider that two further points
now require emphasis. Firstly, the four towns being built in the
New Territories are astride road axes; thus, in the event of riots,
road movement through these built-up areas would be difficult
and often impossible.
Secondly, Communist inspired incidents have
continued to occur along the border and recently some Communists.
Notes:
1.
COS 42/69
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