Any modification from the type approval will have to be submitted to the Authorty for acceptance: hence if you bolt wing pods on to an A330 that mod, together with any other mods required for military operation e.g a freight door, would require Authority approval.
Nope, not if it is a military aircraft operating under a MAR. The "certification" lies with the MoD airworthiness authorities.
The FSTA A330s have been allocated military serials ZZ330-ZZ343.
I think that there may be a plan for the aircraft to hold dual-identities so that they may also be operated as civilian aircraft under the AOC held by AirTanker Ltd. The aircraft's civilian type-certification will depend on the military equipment being deactivated when it is used for this purpose. Such concepts are entirely new-ground and are part of the reason that the project is taking a long time to get up-and-running.
In the past few years there have been several different iterations of civilian-owned aircraft in military service. The Grob Tutor is civilian registered and as such has to observe CAA operating regulations. The King Air originally had a civilian registration but now carries military serials. I believe that this change had to be made so that diplomatic clearance for overseas flights could be obtained, as there was no mechanism for the military to apply for such clearances with civilian aircraft. I don't know whether it has a MAR, but the fact that it is ostensibly unmodified for any military function would make the safety-case straightforward.
Blacksheep, I will say one more time. The 2-crew, EFIS, ETOPS thing is not a show-stopper, but converting airline pilots within an existing TRTO is not the same thing as starting a military operation from scratch with very little relevant corporate knowledge in any training or supervisory postions. As soon as you start trying to ameliorate this problem by importing civilian experience, you are right back into the same contractual issues that affect FSTA. And this is just one of the hurdles that any interim solution would have to face, along with the massive regulatory and airworthiness problems that have only just been touched on here. They could all be overcome, but the timescale is pure fantasy.
Anyone who has any experience of HMG practices knows that it is risible to suggest that a new aeroplane of this kind could be procured and modified, with crews trained and worked up, within 9-months. The person who made this claim had never heard of TES which, quite frankly, says it all about the validity of his argument.