David's books are excellent but very sobering reading when you have spent your life strapped to some of MoDs 'airworthy' acquisitions........and being required to take every senior officers word as truth and gospel.
That's the nub of it! He has somehow performed the impossible and informed us not only of the arcane world of airworthiness, of how it should be and unfortunately isn't, but of how the MOD deliberately lies and obfuscates to cover up past and present actions.
I set out on this road as an ex-driver airframe knowing nothing of all this and bridled at the suggestion that RAF VSOs were anything other than competent and honourable. I/we now know different and that places an obligation on us all, aircrew or groundcrew alike, to spread the word and demand a reform of the corrupt system that knowingly puts and keeps unairworthy aircraft into UK military service. That reform must start with the regulator, which is presently beholden to the operator, the MOD. It must be completely independent of it, as must accident investigation. Only then can we hope for objective and effective investigation and regulation. That process can only begin if the RAF bites the bullet and abandons the cover up of the illegal acts of past RAF VSOs. An unairworthy air force is a liability, not an asset, to national security.
Of course, the MOD will go on being the MOD with all the baleful implications that involves for UK security, but that is a battle for yet another day. PPRuNe is for Aviation Professionals, the pilots bit has long been superseded to include
all who serve, have served, or are concerned with aviation. We've read David's books, we now know the problem, and it beholds us all to spread the word and seek an end to the cover up in order that necessary reform can begin. Until then avoidable airworthiness related UK military air accidents will continue and needless deaths keep happening.