Originally Posted by
tucumseh
This entire 'construct' is, I believe, flawed for a number of reasons. Today's 'Duty Holders' are unlikely to understand or have experienced how to actually deliver and maintain airworthiness. They may know small bits of it, but are more likely to have an inkling about Fitness for Purpose. You can see this in the MAA's regulatory set, which to a large degree concentrates on FFP to the exclusion of the pre-requisites.
The last time I spoke to a senior officer in the MAA, he didn't understand the difference; which was also evident at the C-130 XV179 Inquest in 2008, when the IPTL simply hadn't a clue about his primary role. He didn't say 'of course I would have stopped straight away, had I only known'. He simply denied that he had anything to do with it; and even if he knew what to do, he wasn't allowed to. The families were left wondering who the hell was responsible. The implication was it was all the fault of some junior officer out in Iraq who, somehow, was meant to go and buy some Explosion Suppressant Foam and stuff it in fuel tanks. That's not criticism of either officer. Nothing in their background prepared them for their roles. Nothing has changed.
Engineering Authorities (by which I mean SNCOs and junior officers) are more likely to understand quite a lot about all three areas. I always found the EAs in all three Services superb. But, reader8, you are right in saying very few would speak out, especially when (by definition) you're complaining about a VSO. Slightly easier for civilians, but MoD personnel policy has effectively got rid of any experience.
Yup, agree. One Pprune post can't characterise a whole system that's flawed from the guy on the 18 month ground tour deciding what to buy onwards. Plus the relative anonymity allows one to discharge both barrels.
I would say that it should be the job of the staff to educate the VSO. It's the job of the VSO to take the time to listen and understand when they are paid handsomely for the responsibility they hold. Too many complain about "too much detail" or "this is confusing" to give me a great deal of sympathy (although to be fair to them, it's often their staff laying that foundation for whatever agenda they may or may not have understood from the VSO, as I said, relentless politicians). These two phrases are dispatched by the VSO with a well practiced body language which either says 'tell me more' or 'STFU'. When it's STFU time, maybe they don't understand, maybe they don't want to. I think that if you can't tell the difference you still have problems. There are not many aircraft types and plenty of senior officers to go around.
I did occasionally see a DH simply listen to opposing viewpoints, allow both sides to frankly express views and then give homework and accept risk. It shouldn't come to that, but at given the, as you say, FFP nature of the whole thing it often did. Unfortunately, that behaviour was the exception not the rule.
Of course, depending on the structure of the acquisition the DH may not be able to do much anyway. Take P8 or F35, if there's something the Brits don't like, surely tough if there's a CBA to be done for a global fleet.
At least the front line knows, by-and-large, how to actually operate the thing. Civil aviation breeds experts, we generally don't. People can become so, but when they do the service can't take advantage of that
DE&S are supposed to be the answer, they're not. Again, rarely personal, just a system that doesn't work right.
If it all seams like a bit of a perverse characature, that's because it can be! Safety in terms of airworthiness is best achieved through compliance with recognised practice at the lowest level possible. When that doesn't happen, regardless of whether the problem is in materials used, designs embodied or redundancy provided, things go wrong answering the only question there is "but what does that mean".