Genghis
The very last thing upon which successful T&E should rely is "luck". Sadly, I fear that the excellent dinner at Boscombe will also prove to have been the wake for independent T&E in the UK.
When a current practitioner extols the virtues of the "single type test pilot", what hope is there? Successful T&E has always required its practitioners to have the broadest possible base of experience in order to be able to assess effectively new kit and its performance - and to plan as a team the appropriate T&E programme. Without that base, and being mindful of the extreme shortage of available flying hours always available when a brand-new type is first offered for initial T&E, how will this new breed be able to use his tp experience to extract full value from that limited flight time?
The convoluted chain of command within which the 17 and 41 Sqn tps will operate also strikes me as unsound. Where is the day-to-day supervision and mentoring by experienced tps going to come from? Without that close contact with experienced tps and boffins, the quality of T&E is bound to suffer. I make that comment with absolutely no aspersions being cast on the quality of the individual tps on 17 or 41 Sqns.