Vim Fuego
Excellent post. I have no feelings one way or another for BAeS, but you articulate well the problems any project manager has, especially the moving feast, decision points and who sticks their oar in. Very often the project is effectively frozen for years awaiting a relatively simple decision.
On MRA4, I'd like to hear the opinion of an MoD project manager on the NART report of 1998. Reading it, it is patently obvious that the project needed immediate re-endorsement on both slippage and cost escalation grounds. And that the problems it listed had been well known for at least 6 years. One assumes that approval was given - a number of times! That decision making process must be recorded.
Is it not time for a searching public inquiry? Every time something like this happens, the MoD's line is "It is in the past, we've improved and moved on". But, invariably, the moving on involves promotions for those who screwed up and its the same old faces in charge of the asylum. Why not kill two birds with one stone and have a joint MRA4 / Chinook Mk3 inquiry? After all, the management oversight on both programmes was provided by exactly the same people and they demonstrably knew of the problems at the start of the programmes.