Finnpog
Your mocking is probably quite near the truth. MoD routinely let companies off the hook regarding warranties by completely ignoring the rules governing Service Engineered Mods (just one example).
But, under the current regs, you will never get a company to sign up to deliver an "airworthy" aircraft. There is much more to airworthiness than what they deliver; not least the above SEMs. What you ask them to deliver is a valid and verifiable Safety Case for the Build Standard agreed in the contract; thereafter MoD add their liabilities and justifications to the two higher level Safety Cases (i.e. the Project Director's and the RTSA's). (I know there are variations on this theme, so it is better just to quote the regs here). Even then, DE&S tech staffs will still be over-ruled by those who reckon this is a waste of money; who often cite the Services not asking for the money in the first place as justification.
I'm afraid this needs repeating. The very fact that the Nimrod IPT had to let a Safety Case task on BAeS means the MoD's Safety Management System regs were ignored, in that the requirement for continuous assessment was not implemented. This is why I have a degree of sympathy for the likes of Air Cdre Baber. The very fact he (or more likely someone in his team) let a Safety Case task puts him one-up on his predecessors and contemporaries. The question nobody asks, certainly not Haddon-Cave, was how many gaps in this audit trail did BAeS and MoD find during execution of this task? Gaps mean expensive and time consuming regression - in this case probably many many years.
What continues to astonish me is that this isn't trotted out by his defence and the predecessors investigated as well. Then you'd get into the real problems and. perhaps, an underlying reason for cancellation.