I'm not going to be foolish enough to try to intervene is what is both an illuminating and uplifting discussion, other than to say that if UK Military Airworthiness had been kept in the hands of the likes of you two professional engineers it would not be in the terminal state that it is in today. That is the problem. The first thing that the wreckers did was to kick out the engineers. Thereafter it was in the hands of the barbarians, aka the blanket-stackers and bean-counters. Now it may well be that the "donkeys" of which Rigga speaks are trying to resuscitate its dormant corpse, it may even be that they can get back some signs of life, but they can just as easily be shoved aside at a whim as they were before. The MOD and the military is not divided up into seperate inviolate stacks, labelled "engineers", "aircrew", "cooks and bottle-washers", but organised into a chain of command. That is what makes things happen, including the shutting down of UK Military Airworthiness Provision. It will happen again unless it be moved outside of the MOD. Sign-writing "independent" up all over the place merely consumes paint.