tuc:-
Goat-cluster is harsh on goats.
Indeed, let's call it for what it is, a VSO cluster! Chinook Mk2, Mk3, Nimrod Mk2, MRA4, they all have one thing in common; the bullying, incompetent, and negligent VSOs who presided over those scandals. They go on being protected while the UK Military Airfleets become ever more infected by a pandemic of unairworthiness. If Covid-19 had indeed been deliberately released on the world by a malevolent state you would be ill advised to take advise from it on how it might be stopped, yet that is exactly the fate of UK Military Airworthiness.
It was deliberately subverted by RAF VSOs set on plundering the Air Safety budgets to pay for the results of a disastrous AMSO policy. Their actions have been officially covered up ever since and the resultant airworthiness related fatal air accidents that inevitably followed were blamed on hapless 1*'s, SO's, and most scandalous of all, deceased JO's! That cover up has been upheld by the RAF Star Chamber ever since. And the guardian of UK Military Airworthiness, the MAA (an MOD subsidiary that is of course completely "independent" of the MOD!), perpetuates the myth that the very time that subversion occurred was a "Golden Period" of Air Safety! Birds of a feather?
Just like Covid-19, aviation isn't interested in good intentions. Given half a chance either one will do its best to kill you if not checked. Lack of airworthiness is a sure way to help aviation do just that. That is why Air Regulation and Accident Investigation must be independent of the MOD and of each other.
Self Regulation Doesn't Work and in Aviation it Kills!