Thanks for your input, Rigga. Much appreciated. As has been stated before, thank goodness that this airworthiness related thread isn't a fatal accident one, as has been the case of so many others. That of course is the issue here. It is imperative that real remedial action to reform UK Military Airworthiness is undertaken without delay. The pertinent word there is 'real', rather than yet more spin via the MOD's sign-writer. Time is of the essence. Before the next inevitable tragic and sad airworthiness related UK Military fatal air accident thread appears here, it is vital that real reform has begun. While the 'independent' MAA and MAAIB (yes, I know!) are shackled to the MOD and each other that cannot happen.
As to the fleets you instance I only wish I could share your optimism. Thanks to the genesis each experienced they do indeed give certain cause for some confidence I admit, but once on the UK Military Register they are as vulnerable as any of the others in my view. Deliberate subversion of the system from above may now seem unthinkable. So it did in the 80's, yet the unthinkable happened thanks to Self Regulation. So it can again, and all that ignores the continuing systemic shortcomings that evolved from that very first illegal order to suborn the Regulations.
To suffer one subversion may seem unfortunate, to suffer another would seem more than careless...