LJ,
That was my point, regardless of whether it's the AAIB or a Mil AAIB manned by civi's/mil personnel or any other watchdog organisation, the purseholder (government) ultimately pulls the strings (and I don't mean financially) when it's deemed to be necessary e.g. when a significant stakeholder (could be the MoD.......) thinks it's not in their or certain people's interests to be exposed.
I'd agree that public whistleblowing disclosure is perhaps the only way to effect change, the MoD will not, as it's not in their interests, allow independent (as much as there would ever be true independence) investigation - could you ever see the government taking that away from the MoD?
And let's face it, there's been quite a lot of whisleblowing but has it changed the MoD's approach either to airworthiness or investigation of the after effects.?
As I said, it would take something on the scale of a large transport/surveillance/tanker aircraft to impact a city with tens or hundreds of lives lost where the root cause was a lack of airworthiness, before there's a fundamental change in investigation and by whom. One or two lives lost here and there, sad as the causes were, where only service personnel are involved will not effect that change toward independant investigation.