Originally Posted by
Engines
In my direct experience, many UK aircraft fleets have been decimated by poor management of in service configuration, mainly by indiscriminate application of in service modifications. Put simply, if you keep applying ‘mission essential’ mods to various groups of aircraft in a fleet, you can VERY quickly get to the point where you can only generate very low numbers of aircraft for ops. This phenomenon is called ‘fleets within fleets’ and has gone on for years in the UK. The main driver (and I choose these words carefully) is the desire of senior aircrew officers to get ‘new kit’ coupled with an unwillingness to engage with their engineers who are trying to manage the fleets being modified.
I would have to disagree with the bolded bit, IME the driver is cost. For instance we are buying 8 sets of HMCS and that's it. So any mods can only be applied on X number of frames. If we properly funded TES kit, we wouldn't end up with fleets within fleets.