To those who stand against Tapper’s Dad, your criticisms would only be remotely valid if;
1. The Nimrod MRA4 were a brand new aeroplane design and in no way related to the MR2 and,
2. The failings reiterated by Haddon-Cave only applied to the MR2
The MRA4 design audit trail relies on the airworthiness of the MR2, even more so now we hear of museum pieces being robbed of spares for the MRA4 line.
The failings were systemic, across the MoD (with a few exceptions when individuals stood against the senior staffs that knowingly compromised aircrew safety).
In fact it isn't in service now because of the nervousness generated by Haddon Cave, I'll leave us all to decide whether that's a good or bad thing!
Haddon-Cave’s report seems to have become a convenient excuse. The general failings and criticisms he reported were well known within MoD for over 20 years. The programme is 10 years late. 9 of those years have nothing whatsoever to do with the publication of the H-C report. The latest delay, which you attribute to H-C, is in all probability caused by people in MoD who are paid to know the airworthiness regs inside out, reading H-C and suddenly realising they don’t. They will have had to regress and correct any mistakes made over the last 15 years. Mistakes, by the way, that were well known and reported to MoD(PE)’s 2 Star and 4 Star at the time; who directed that JSP553 and Def Stan 00-970 could be ignored – on all programmes. As I always say, take even a cursory glance at the MoD family tree and you’ll see, for example, the Chinook Mk3 came under the same 2 Star. Ask why that post is not even mentioned by H-C. Yet that is why he used the term “systemic”. (Actually, he lifted it from a submission to his Review).
If anyone wants to have a pop, please don’t go after the easy target. Try to understand the wider and deeper issues. Go after the faceless ones who were told exactly what would happen, but got their gongs and retirement benefits and walked away.
Have as go at, for example, Adam Ingram, who was told, in writing and over a year
before XV230 crashed, that the airworthiness regs were not being implemented properly. (Precisely the words used by ACM Sir Clive Loader in the BoI report). Ask Ingram why he only replied 9 months
after the crash, ludicrously claiming they WERE implemented correctly. (He didn’t even show a morsel of remorse and both he and his successors are quite content at being lied to this way, because it is politically convenient. That is why, despite his other failings, Des Browne should be applauded). More to the point, ask if those who lied to him in that Ministerial Brief still work in airworthiness or, worse, the MAA. Are you happy that they still work in MoD at all? The Haddon-Cave report is just the beginning.