Originally Posted by
Easy Street
........ If no-one is calling for the Mil Spec to be changed (does the wider RW community think it's rubbish?) then all anyone in the RAF could have done is waived a requirement for the contractor to implement a published safety standard. Why should any accountable individual take that risk simply to accommodate the aircraft selected by a contractor which would have been fully aware of the requirement and the specification? .....
What would be interesting to see is exactly what the initial Requirement placed on Industry by the MoD (as a whole including the "end Customers" - the Services) looked like. The nature of contracting out work like this is that one of the savings is through the use of COTS-based equipment and thereby accepting some deviation from Mil Specs in the process (for example, are all the avionics up to Mil Spec?) unless otherwise specified in the Requirements.
Maybe this is more of a case of 2nd thoughts by the MoD regarding this part of the Requirement. If it was a late change to the Requirement to include Mil Spec seating then hard to blame the Contractor. Even if it had been in the initial Requirement, was the Contractor provided with a waiver relating to the seats which has subsequently been withdrawn? Don't know - just sayin'!
Clearly a ball has been dropped - but by whom? Wouldn't be the first time the MoD changes requirements late in the day - but, currently, I don't think it's clear what happened. Maybe someone can enlighten us. Cheers,
H 'n' H