LJ
A well argued piece as with most of your posts.
One topic that seriously affected the date of the military release to service was the new MAA not being really clear on their remit - and for a number of months, neither the MAA (which turns out in practice to be advisory not an 'Authority'), nor the 'Duty Holder' in 2Group - who was given some authority but was not informed of how he was to assure himself, nor the IPT (bar one or two class acts who worked round the clock to find a way of saying 'yes' when there was a whole range of 'my processes are not quite mature enough' stakeholders too worried about something this serious called a 'Nimrod' in the post HC world to say anything other then 'not yet') had much of an idea how to complete a release to servie.
Incidentally, I look forward to the first time the MAA ask a US supplier if they wouldn't mind reworking their design evidence, for free, in line with a newly introduced set of UK Def Standards, a decade into a programme.