JTO
What an excellent post. I recognise every word.
The common denominators between this XX204 report and that of XX177 (Flt Lt Cunningham, issued in 2012) will be blindingly obvious. The final act differs, but the underlying failures remain the same. Given MoD claimed the recommendations from 2012 were being implemented, one is entitled to ask why so little progress was made before March 2018.
Various office holders/DHs are the subject of recommendations. For example, AOC 22 Gp has eight. To implement them requires resources and trained staff. He (and others) will have staff who know what they want, but not necessarily how to go about it. He might even ask why those recommendations that are mandated policy have been ignored. He might get a sympathetic hearing from DE&S, but be told (a) no endorsed requirement, but in any case (b) we no longer employ sufficiently junior civil servants to do this stuff.
(If you’re interested, these were ‘special tasks’ handed out to staff who sat one below the MoD(PE) minima. Among other things, they identified the funding, or staffed the bid if it was a bit costly - say, over £20M - and generally managed the task. I say £20M, because it is formal policy in MoD that it is a ‘routine expectation’ of any technical grade to be able to identify up to that sum for such use, without degrading operational capability. Not that it’s enforced these days, but perhaps it should be. People should be given the opportunity to learn their limitations).
Straight away, the AOC is up against it, and I sympathise. Almost by definition, the current AOC will be long gone before anything is done, and his successor will say he has other ‘new’ problems; not realising that most are the same old problems. He generally finds out after the next accident. Meanwhile, if they’ve read these reports, aircrew and groundcrew are wondering WTF is going on. And, as we know, the typical Air Staff response is to dismiss feedback as ‘ …uninformed, crewroom level, emotive comment lacking substantive evidence and focus’. (Nimrod Review, p360). This, in reply to the RAF Director of Flight Safety (Air Cdre E.J. Black), who had fully supported the crewroom. That was in 1998, and the XX204 and XX177 reports are just two examples full of precisely the same ‘emotive comment’.
DGDSA says at the end of the report that he ‘agrees’ with all the recommendations. What does that mean? It isn’t a formal endorsement, so the DHs are no further forward, 19 months after the accident. If DGDSA has, as we’re told, the ear of Secy of State, what the DHs want to read is ‘I’ve briefed the Secy on what we need, he’s agreed and given his endorsement, I’ve briefed the personnel responsible for delivery and given them timescales, they’re cracking on and must report progress to the DHs every Friday’. Now, it’s a long time since I’ve done this and visited MB every Friday morning (that new-fangled e-mail thing might suffice these days) but, believe me, doors open when you have such a task. Of course, many of the recommendations can be satisfied by self-tasking. Or just doing what the regs say. Unfortunately, both are anathema to many.
The DHs have every right to ask why the common Causes, Factors, Observations and Recommendations from previous accidents haven’t been addressed. But that doesn’t absolve them of what JTO mentions - the ‘I didn’t know’ defence. Whatever happened to the old system of the 2 Stars’ primary task being a monthly assessment of the Top 10 risks in ‘his’ risk register(s)?