Can't see it myself, and being able to trace all the airworthiness aspects of a 40+ year old a/c that has sat in a desert for years is nigh on impossible. This is something the MAA or MOD has never done before, and will surely be interesting to watch unfold.
This is the nub of the problem. It doesn’t matter that the aircraft are of foreign origin etc. The rules are well known, albeit MoD cancelled the relevant Def Stan a few years ago without bothering to replace it, and no longer have a complete copy (!) Essentially, the aircraft and their equipment are designated Category 5 or 6 (in my opinion 5, but no doubt MoD will try to save money at the expense of safety), and you follow the regs. (A different “Cat 5” to the one most here recognise).
The issue here is the audit trail, or more specifically, how to manage without one. The MAA has a real problem here, not of their making. They referred to it at the recent MAA Conference, but the speaker couldn’t elaborate, not least because to do so in any detail would have exposed the lies (or incompetence) of other speakers. That is, the MAA owe their every existence to past senior staffs ruling that the mandated audit trail is not necessary, and making no compensatory provision to manage the inevitable outcome. This was exposed in the 1992 CHART report (Chinook, Puma & Wessex), but the MAA can’t mention this because it would mean acknowledging the Haddon-Cave lie that the problems only commenced in 1998. In this case, they must be seen to do something or it calls their existence into question; it may be this is the case which forces them to acknowledge the truth.
Zero 1, you mentioned “change control”, which is one component of the overarching process which delivers a maintained Safety Case. You are correct that it is an area of MoD’s business that is poorly controlled, and hence ripe for overcharging and unnecessary work. The underlying reason is the same as above. The RAF Chief Engineer’s organisation issued an edict 20 odd years ago to rundown this entire area and, since then, MoD has not had a trained cadre of specialists to manage it effectively. (The last team was disbanded in June 1993). And, as I said, the Def Stan has been cancelled without replacement. The MAA has tried to reinvent this wheel, but the part of their new suite of documents that tries to deal it has been written by someone who has not a single clue and has obviously never bothered to speak to anyone who has. As Small Spinner says, it will be interesting......