Tuc,
I think we would all benefit if you occasionally used less acronyms
!
I agreed with your post entirely, and your latest. I have been trying to change attitudes ever since I was sent to Afg in a slick. The advice not to send the slick from Herc OEU being overturned by a very senior officer at Group. He allegedly briefed the Minister something different. I tried the CoC and flagged up a host of urgent kit requirements, the Chiefs in the RAF were not interested and my Flight Commander was threatened with the sack.
Then XV179 was shot down by a bullet.
The initial response to fit a handful of ac with foam some time down the track; the rest is history.
Large ac self-protection has simply been ignored until very recently.
Ignored by people who have never been to war, or whose only experience is life in a fast jet. Tuc you are suggesting that combat survivability and ac self-protection should be at the core of the design. I could not agree more. We lost XV230 even though we learnt the hard way on the Herc fleet that fuel tanks explode. We await the BoI for the Herc that was destroyed on a strip in Iraq. I believe that too was a fuel tank explosion.
So to the future. The word from military officers in MoD is that MRA4 is an old design, procured a long time ago. Well, the design was only frozen last December. I have been told that large aircraft safety and combat survivability is now taken very seriously. So seriously that A400M OBIGGS has not been funded yet. The plan for MRA4 is to introduce it into service without FDA, OBIGGS, BBay Fire protection, under floor fire protection, probe inerting protection, dual skin AAR pipework.
I am sorry, but that is simply not good enough.
In the mean time, the MR2 boys and girls soldier on. AOC ordered them to continue AAR under his specific authority after XV230. But they have no B Bay or fuel tank protection and they take their chances of a mid air collision with no TCAS.
Someone explain to me how the MoD can claim they are learning lessons here?
I will not stop until attitudes change, and that comes from the very top.