davejb:
Chug,
I think H-C is talking (really) about an ideal - his description works really well IF you can accept the idea that a subsidiary organisation within a larger whole can be truly independent (ie the boss says what he and his minions think, not what they know their boss wants them to think), therefore you gain the advantages of your truly independent MAA whilst retaining the huge amount of real life operational experience that is still present in the RAF/MoD (although ever more diluted). Integrity is the word, unfortunately it is sometimes seen as being bloody minded and dismissed. On the other hand, sometimes it IS bloody mindedness of course...
Well, do you think it can be truly independent? Integrity is truly the word. What integrity can we expect from the MOD? Remember this is the Airworthiness Authority that rigged the CAR of the Chinook Mk2 so that it could enter service with the RAF on a restricted RTS. The whole procedure was in contravention of its own regulations. The gamble did not pay off. 29 people died on the Mull of Kintyre. The RAF conducted the BoI so that the MOD's complicity, in company with its own, was not revealed. Instead the reputations of two deceased junior officers were destroyed by two Air Marshals. Integrity? You must be joking. This report is indeed ground breaking, but it is not MOD breaking. Like Jacko I am uncomfortable with the lynch-mob atmosphere that is already emerging. Some or all of those named may be truly responsible for serious failings or worse, but I am certain that many many others were who remain unscathed. The real problem is the MOD, endex. Leaving it in charge of Airworthiness is like leaving the keys of the drinks cabinet with an alcoholic. Of course a separate MAA would be enormously difficult to establish and staff, but at least it would be independent and have one pre-occupation, the airworthiness of the military air-fleet. I think Mr H-C's MAA will have many as it wrestles with the same dilemma as its predecessors, just how can it succeed faced within the reality of the Defence Budget? As ever the Treasury's fingerprints are all over this in my view. Sorry Mr H-C, but I see no happy ending here.