Orca, falcon, I'll try to field a response. Firstly, my posts may be sweeping, if so I apologise. I am trying to summarise a very complex, arcane, and long drawn out affair that has resulted in the present day state of UK Military Air Safety. They rather assume that others have read the various airworthiness related fatal accident threads in this Forum. They also refer to the contents of David Hill's various books relating to the consequences of the late80s/early 90s subversion of UK Military Air Safety by certain RAF VSOs.
I would recommend reading those books (rather more than reading the entire Haddon-Cave report, Orca!) They are the personal testimony of someone who refused to suborn the regs when so ordered, and has attempted to expose the quite deliberate subversion of Air Safety for short term financial saving. The results are still with us and will remain with us until real reform is carried out.
The MAA as presently constituted does not do that. On the contrary it is based on a lie, that the early 90's were a 'Golden Period' of UK Military Air Safety (recognise the phrase, Orca? You should it is from Haddon-Cave and illustrates how the official record is distorted and altered to throw focus away from that original subversion of UK Military Air Safety). I assume that you both know how airworthiness works, that every aircraft and every aircraft system has to be fully audited continuously throughout its existence, from start to finish. No matter how assiduously today's personnel go about doing that, if their predecessors didn't, then that aircraft, that system, is unairworthy (witness the loss of Sean Cunningham). Rather like pregnancy you can't be half airworthy. You are or you are not. I contend that the latter is the case in the main today.
I regret if I have not answered your questions and points satisfactorily, especially your list of specific ones, Orca. No doubt tuc will do much better. My point is that UK Military Air Safety has a big problem which can only be satisfactorily addressed if past events are honestly addressed. If they are then the way ahead is to prevent such things happening again. That requires real independence of the MAA and the MilAAIB (or whatever its latest incarnation) both of the MOD and of each other. Then and only then can the long and painful path back to attaining full airworthiness of the UK Military Airfleet begin.