?
Whaaat? Are we saying that flying an aircraft that is a former military aircraft, withdrawn from service half a century ago, which flies under a PTF, is not airworthy as there is a question as to who was the approving office for the Military COA that the aircraft had around the time that the Wright Bros had tired of trying to chase flight attendants with bicycles and decided that a natty cap and bars would serve better?
Read the AAIB report, Appendix L, Airworthiness Approval Note No:26172, Issue 2, paragraph 3.
'Approval basis. ... The Design Authority now rests with the RAF, and support is supplied, if requested, by British Aerospace, Farnborough'.
Plainly. 'if requested' applies to the RAF, as no-one else is mentioned, and it is they (the RAF, not MoD) who the CAA assume have British Aerospace under significant contract.
This was signed on 3 July 2008. It refers to that date, forward. Not decades ago. The premise is completely wrong, and always has been. MoD was asked to comment, and agreed.
Now go and read what an Aircraft Design Authority does, and delivers. Their output is a prerequisite to declaring airworthiness, which is a prerequisite to declaring serviceability. The reason why most pilots don't see what an ADA does is because these prerequisites should be done and dusted before you see the aircraft, and for the most part invisible to you. The tiny bit that is visible may indeed be 0.3 grams of paperwork. But the true ADA will have hundreds of people working on the task, at huge cost. The AAIB report is chock full of shortcuts being taken because the ADA output was simply not there.