I hate to watch this thread is turning into a mud slinging contest on what constitutes a safe or unsafe ac. A safe ac is one that doesn’t fly. A lot of PPruners give the impression that the management are sending ac airborne not caring if they are safe or not. Do you really believe that? Each ac is checked before it goes flying and if it is deemed unsafe it does not go. Remember they are called ACCEPTABLE deferred defects and limitations and there are rules as to what is acceptable.
If the need for the ac wasn’t so great, I’m sure AAR would cease. Military flying by its nature is risky, that’s why the safety issue cannot be compared with civil ac. Of course cost is an issue, what makes it worse is you cannot recover those costs by selling more ac, therefore, a risk assessment has to be carried out.
Also, there is a lot of duff gen concerning current and future ac floating around on this thread, no doubt some would like to correct but owing to the open forum feel they cannot. So don’t get too excited and rude to people, put forward your views but be wary of ‘facts’ that are second hand.
Why don’t I correct these ‘facts’? Because I ceased to be in the employ of Her Majesty earlier this year and my ‘facts’ may well be out of date.
Historical issues, on the other hand, I am willing to discuss
TSM
I read the link and found it interesting. I compared Nimrod figures and placed them in the table; that backed up your argument mainly because of too few sorties to make the comparison meaningful. However, I did notice the figures quoted only started in 1986, it would be interesting to see what the table was like if we went back to the 60’s.
Too early for cocoa, afternoon tea perhaps.