There are others more knowledgeable but I thought the Government had recently admitted the primary concern with MRA4 was airworthiness. The aeroplane may or may not have been superb, but there were too many gaps in the various audit trails so it was impossible to find anyone willing to sign up to the regulations having been met. I'm told it wasn't a simple case of meeting the regulations, because still serving senior officers had condoned them being ignored. What usually happens is MoD waits until they retire and quietly reverses the policy. I'm told this is what happened earlier in the Mull of Kintyre case when MoD and Government were willing to overturn but an Air Marshall threatened to resign. The imperative was to avoid that embarrassment, and if that meant covering up misdemeanors then so be it.