Originally Posted by dkh51250
BAE should be picking up the tab for any airframe shortfalls.
That is a nice cosy thought, isn't it. Unfortunately for the Taxpayer, these machines aren't Far Eastern built motor cars where they will replace free of charge any bits that wear out. If you want that level of support, you have to pay for it and HM Treasury is not that free with "its" money. I don't know but I suspect that the contract would have been negotiated and approved for peacetime operational tempo with limited overseas dets. Additionally, any support stores held by the MoD would have been provisioned on that wonderful barely enough just too late principle; the one where stock holding is strongly discouraged by those equally wonderful RAB charges.
Don't ask why the MoD put in place such bone programme inhibitors: it didn't; the Treasury did.