Chug said……….
“By ground testing the AR system and over pressurising it at that, it would seem that consistently no leaks resulted, but as you say that did not guarantee no leakage, indeed it occurred, and seemingly in some abundance. A classic case of 'ground tested and found serviceable'?”
I recall similar discussions some while back on the Mull thread. This very simplistic attitude in the MoD toward diagnosis, testing, repair (including verifying the repair, which many like to conveniently regard as a separate issue) led to a single damaged LRU being recovered from the Chinook, “tested” in glorious isolation by the contractor using highly dubious and unvalidated methodology – and as a result of that test the MoD declared the entire navigation system serviceable in the minutes prior to the impact. Also, and related to another fatal example, MoD insisted that it was sufficient to bench test IFF systems in the factory and accept the result as evidence of airworthiness, without further testing, when integrated (or not, as the case may be) into the aircraft and other systems.
These are not leaps of faith. They are the depths of incompetence.
This is NOT an indictment on maintainers. Those who read this know that I am fully aware of the different roles – engineering set the standards, QA ensure they are met by production (which includes inspection). But if engineering (in this case the IPT and DEC, representing the higher echelons of the MoD and Government) do not make materiel and financial provision to provide maintainers with the necessary tools (up to date APs, test equipment, spares etc) then maintainers cannot be held liable. In days gone by, if any of these tools were missing or not to the correct standard, QA snagged it and work stopped pending corrective action. The fact that probably less than 1% of IPT staff have the vaguest notion of what I’m talking about IS an indictment. If they don’t understand, how on earth can they, (a) calculate and (b) seek, proper materiel and financial provision in the first place? This is not just me saying this – the MoD’s own auditors have long been critical of the dismantling of these vital competencies and processes; which are simply regurgitated in the QinetiQ report mentioned here.
I can just about see where the MoD is coming from – they are associating the leaks with AAR, so stopping that mitigates the risks back to an ALARP level. But go back to the risk classification matrix I mentioned earlier. With this most recent event, do you think the probability of occurrence is still “remote”, or has it been raised one level to “occasional” (and therefore, to Class A)? As the good book says, “Class A risks represent an unacceptable level of risk, which can only be tolerated under truly exceptional circumstances”. And what constitutes “truly exceptional” is not decided on the whim of a lowly IPTL – the deciding factor is the political imperative.