FSTA runs dry
BEagle - still banging on about "the expensive and procrastinating hand of QwintyQwoo" I see.
People who hadn't been involved used to say exactly the same back in the '60s about MOD(PE) as it then called itself.
Expensive - yes. But a damned sight less expensive in both money and lives than simply taking the maker's word (possibly supported by that new, never been there before, international rubber-stamp group) that everything's super.
Procrastinating - can be so, but more often it's the makers that take for ever to sort out a problem of their making - literally!
As a bright-eyed young jet jock, I used to think that aircraft manufacturers were wonderful chaps who built all this marvellous kit that we rushed around the sky in. Took a tutor at ETPS to open my eyes with his introduction to a morning lecture, delivered in ever such a quiet voice: "All aircraft manufacturers are rogues". (He had full attention from the class thereafter!) Sad but true.
Their aim: to get accepted the cheapest, nastiest piece of kit which they can persuade MOD to buy. Job of QwantiQwoo and its predecessors: to make sure that no unsafe kit is allowed into service AND to ensure that what does come into service actually meets the spec - which it often doesn't at first try. And that's before we get into the debate about how valid the spec was in the first place.