I find it instructive, caz, that your anecdotes (other than those about your own illustrious career) concern the incompetence and at times gross negligence of various drivers airframe. One would be forgiven for believing that they were the sole cause of the various losses of Her Majesty's Aeroplanes during your tenure as Group SFSO. The incompetence and at times gross negligence of Her Majesty's Air Officers never seem to get a mention. Could it be that the "system" that:
has to be flexible enough to deal with all sorts of investigations worldwide, possibly in combat zones.
is so flexible as to conveniently ignore such aberrations? The present system may well avoid embarrassment for such august persons but does very little for Flight Safety if Military Air Accident Investigations are so one sided. As I have pointed out before, if BA had both Airworthiness Authority over its fleet and sole Accident Investigation powers over its own accidents, their report of the B777 arrival at LHR would be a very different one to what we can expect from the AAIB. Flipster is right, high time that Military Air Accident Investigation be independent and professional, in much the same way as Military Airworthiness Regulation should be. Self Regulation does not work and in aviation it kills.