keithl:
The AAIB are an example to all, perhaps they should investigate ALL accidents, Mil and Civ?
While I agree wholeheartedly with your statement, I'm not sure that the AAIB would agree with your suggestion. Like the CAA, civilian responsibilities preoccupy the AAIB and if the very particular needs of military aviation require specialist inspectors and investigators, they might as well be vested in an MAA and MAAIB respectively. However, your point is well made and a potential compromise might be the "sistering" of the MAA with the CAA, and of the MAAIB with the AAIB. Thus full use could be made of the experience and expertise of these two independent civilian bodies to bring the military ones up to speed.
None of this is going to be easy, and far better minds than mine are needed to make it work, but work it must. No-one would suggest that the CAA and the AAIB should be one and the same, for the first for example might be found by the second to have allowed a knowingly Grossly Unairworthy aircraft to obtain a a CoA and enter airline service. It could not do that if it were not independent. Nor would it be acceptable if the airlines directly controlled the CAA and AAIB, for they could subvert their work and flagrantly disregard the Regulations, thus endangering their passengers. Yet all this and more has been the case in UK Military Aviation and must be made impossible in future. That can only happen if the MAA and the MAAIB are independent of the MOD and of each other. As to how all this be funded, pass! No matter how though, the cost will be less in blood and treasure that has been paid by the UK Military in the last 30 years.
You say:
I'm not certain I agee with John Blakely and Chugalug2, but I like the way they conduct the debate.
Thank you for the complement, but I am more interested with your inability to agree with JB and myself. Could you say what it is you disagree with? None of this makes for happy reading, and I do not like having to point a finger at the Service that I love, but it has to swallow the bullet and make sure that future HM Coroners do not feel obliged to tell it, "There's something wrong with your bloody aircraft!".