GrahamO
For someone who has been in the system since 1985, you've missed out on a lot. UK defence standards are not written by the RAF, they are produced by the DStan Agency under the direction of the MOD. The direction to fit national products is not provided by the services but is usually more to do with political directive or security of supply. Also whilst the user gererates most of the URD, they have a limited input into the SRD and in the majority of the project do not have day to day control, that tends to be CS. There is also no requirement for a uniform to sign off contract changes at the SRD level unless it compromises a URD requirement.
Having sat on both sides of the fence, you do not see many uniforms at meetings unless it is directly related to service use. I suspect that many people who post here have voiced their opinions at programme meetings and have often been ignored.
The procurement process is a behmoth that is so layered with regulation that very few can understand it in its entirety. Trying to point the finger at an individual failing is a waste of time. The system has been built up over several hundred years and has been progressively added to, without sufficient housekeeping to keep it manageable. The result is a beast of such complexity that blame is abrogated across the entire structure and that is why it never gets better.
SS
Being a good PM is as much of a skill as being a good engineer. Unfortunately, design decisions are not cost or time independant and someone has to be responsible for both. The discipline was invented to provide project control, it is in the implementation that it falls over. Looking across industry, you will see organisations that get is consistently right as well as wrong.
regards
retard