Easy Street
Not an easy task. As you say, a dry and complex subject. Let's face it, about 3 people in MoD understand it, so the attention span of Joe Public is 2 seconds at most. Editors are aware of this. They don't understand that the same basic failures are responsible for the higher profile cases, like body armour, "armoured" vehicles, batteries exploding etc. That is not a criticism, because MoD don't understand it either. Individuals do, but policy militates against being able to correct it at a corporate level.
MoD play on this; in fact their policies rely on it. The classic example is: the year before XV230 crashed, Adam Ingram (Minister for Armed Forces) was formally
advised, in writing, that the airworthiness regs were not being implemented and there were systemic failures. At first he refused to reply, but an MP (now a Minister) pressed. (Kudos).
AFTER XV230 crashed, Ingram sent the MP a holding reply, stating the issues raised (by me) were "too complex" for anyone in MoD to answer, so a formal reply would take time. Eventually, 9 months after XV230 crashed, when it was already well known the crash was caused by airworthiness failures, Ingram replied to that MP, asserting there were no airworthiness failures, the regs were implemented correctly, and he had personally satisfied himself this was the truth.
Clearly, someone in MoD lied to him. In fact, quite a few people. Two years before (April 2004) the same MoD people had advised his predecessor that I was the only person in MoD who thought the airworthiness and financial probity regulations should be implemented! (I know this, because the Minister's office accidentally provided the MoD briefing paper to me under FoI).
Despite the Haddon-Cave and Lord Philip reports revealing the truth (up to a point), Ingram's successors have placed in writing that they remain content at the quality and accuracy of advice from MoD. Sir Malcolm Rifkind was the only past Minister to publicly breach protocol by stating he was grossly misled by Wratten and Graydon when briefed on Mull of Kintyre. (Kudos again; I believe this influenced Lord Philip). But no-one takes the next logical step - prosecution of this offence. THAT would switch the press on.
That is what we are up against. If the press want to publish anything they invite MoD comment. They get the same crap as the MP did. When they spoke to Alcock and Graydon during the Philip Inquiry, both blatantly lied; and those lies became official MoD policy and were included in Liam Fox's speeches. If they push MoD, the reply is (and remains) that XV230 was a single event, Haddon-Cave's report solved all problems while it remained in service, and now it's gone there can be no further problems. The compartmentalisation I speak of.
They completely ignore the "systemic" nature of the failings - the fact that much of airworthiness is (was, should be) a core MoD function, so if there was a failure on Nimrod (no valid Safety Case), it followed that the same failures existed on other aircraft. That was true for Chinook in June 1994, as it was for the other accidents mentioned here.
What I've written above makes senior people in MoD topple. You know what it's like. People who understand detail are frowned upon. If you do succeed in getting your point across, you're rocking the boat. Junior MoD staffs are today taught that understanding such detail is a career killer. I've known very highly qualified staff doctor their CVs by removing all evidence of such experience, as it helps them advance. And the VSOs prefer to sail in calm waters, ignoring the turbulence above and below.