JN,
Name me one Design Authority that isn't 'entirely monopolistic'? They all are, it's a function of their role in life.
If you think that BAE are a hard cooky to deal with you've obviously had no commercial dealings with the likes of Boeing and Lockheed Martin!
Accountancy proceduress are just that, accountancy procedures, I fail to see how them applying to the military somehow makes them "inappropriate"?
These "thoroughly amortised bases, infrastructure and facilities", are in fact thoroughly antique and whoefully inadequate with outdated and underfunded facilities dating back in some cases to the mid-nineteen thirties.
As for the spares being bought and paid for, that's partly the problem, investment in a usually inadequate spares provisioning is indemic to the RAF front line and has been for decades. The problem is going to grow and grow in an age where so much of the really important kit is software driven and faces early obscolecence. This has hit the MOD time after time in the last ten years and they are just not up to it.
Make it the contractors responsibility and you don't have to worry about it, it becomes their problem.
The main issue for the UK MOD is that they want everything on the cheap, and power by the hour does not come cheap.