Airworthiness and Risk
First Tucumseh - thanks very much for your further excellent examples of how and why what MOD always claims is a robust system lets the guys in the front line down far too often - as you say the human element which should be the "glue" that makes sure all the links come and work together has been too often the weakest link for many years past, and worse far too many people at the top of the food chain are only too happy to listen to what they perceive to be the good news, for example on coping with budget cuts, without questioning what lies beneath the surface or worse not understanding the implications even when they are explained to them.
Covec - yours is an interesting question, and Tuc may also wish to answer as he is more up to date than me on MOD procedures. However, as far as I am aware although each project should have an up to date risk register (including the MRA4 for example) during the D&M phase this does not translate into a specific in-service risk register - rather flying risks will end up as performance limitations or procedures - engineering risks may well end up as additional inspections, lower component lives etc etc. In other words those areas where you might have a "performance" risk left from the devopment programme should end up somewhere in the paperwork and be clearly visible. As an example if some of the analyses I mentioned for the IFR installation had been carried out (as you will realise I doubt if they were for the MRA2 installation or are being for the MRA4) show a clear risk then in theory you must do something about it unless you can show that the odds of it happening are so low as to be acceptable (and I do not know the current numbers for the clearance of military aircraft). Thus you may change procedures to reduce or eliminate exposure to the risk - you could increase the frequency of inspections to ensure the situation is not deteriorating or, best of all (but most expensive) you could modify the problem out.
Obviously for any in-service aircraft it is the task of the engineering officers and supervisors to make their own assessment of day to day risks eg when offering an aircraft to the aircrew with a deferred defect or flight limitation, and, of course the final link is the captain not just with regard to the acceptance of the safety issues, but also for suitablity for the task. Often there will be formal help eg with published limits for cracks etc and a minimum equipment list and you could, I sppose, regard these as a type of Risk Register. I have always assumed that supervisors on the flying side make similar assessments -but again without any formal "risk register" for operational factors other than the RTS and a knowledge of the capabilities/training of their crews.
I would assume that there will be formal IFR trials for the MRA4 if only for the different aerodynamic configuration, but whether this will make a proper assessment of the installation itself I would not know - it is one of my questions.
JB