"Simply a flying bus "???
While not disagreeing that fast military jets are sophisticated and have their own complexities, it's the complcations of the system that brings them into service that "got" me even while I was driving some of them. The interaction (or not) between manufacturer and all the outfits that stand between builder and operator seemed (seems) to me to be unnecessarily time-wasting - and when suddenly the matter's urgent, you get bodge jobs like the Nimrod, for example.
The cynic I became used to reckon that after an aircraft was declared "Service ready", it would be the Mk.4 or even Mk.6, before the "real" aircraft was truly capable of doing the job. Even the lovely Hunter showed visible signs of "bodgery", with its add-on airbrake, the chain-link collectors, and don't forget the engine problems it had when the first attempts were made to fire its guns ... I just hope, for the crews' sake, that all Typhoon's wonder-systems are "Go" right now !
Haddon-Cave highlighted short-comings, sure enough, but I think there are other problems along the chain from factory to Squadron.
In the civil world, all the quite complex systems on the "simple bus" have to work from EIS - and do.