Nigel,
The minifleets point is well taken - the fear I would have is that a burst of pressonitis from Group or above could mean that people were coerced into taking a frame that wasn't fitted "just this once" because "we have to hit our numbers". Sorry, senior people need to accept that if you go the minifleet route (and presumably only because of money), it comes with a health warning that says "not fitted, not going" in all but the most extreme circumstances. As you say, this is why you have the whole lot done, asap.
In the case of the foam - which is
CHEAP - the risk vs. cost trade off would be so far in the right direction that it's a no brainer to do it, and it shouldn't arise. All I'm saying is that this won't always be true - some systems are extremely expensive and in a given scenario would be of marginal, if any benefit. At some level, in voluntarily signing on, we are accepting that there will be more risk in our lives than those who do not. Not all of our missions are safe, nor could some of them be made safe.
So, if I were an Airship (which I'm not, and won't be) I could imagine occassions where I would commit crews to very dangerous missions from which I knew a proportion would likely not come back. Ultimately, this would be for the sake of UK foreign policy. And I'd do it with a heavy heart, but if it was mission critical, then it's got to be done: this is presumably the challenge of senior command.
Not sure if this is an answer, but just my 2p.
On the new build foam point, very interesting. I can fully understand that the K's (nee E's) didn't have it from new - because contemporary US built aircraft didn't either as built.
But presumably new build US J's do. So if our
Js don't have foam, and it's standard on the American ones, we would have had to specify that we didn't want it: so a really good procurement call there by someone. Did they pay with their career and their pension? Guesses on the back of an envelope.
S41