Engines, as ex-RAF pilot may I say that your lucid and critical expose of the ACAS/RTS system really hurts, as it is so true! The RAF has a lot to account for in this scandal, in that where the guilty party is the "MOD" it was often serving RAF VSOs that were the perpetrators of the deliberate subversion of the Airworthiness process. That peoples lives might still be unnecessarily hazarded because of inter Service politics is unacceptable. As you say, the whole RTS procedure needs to be challenged by the MAA, but by an MAA that is independent and separate of the MOD and not RAF dominated!
Safety, be it Flight, Air, Aerospace, or whatever today's buzz word is, has got to stop being a football booted around the corridors of power and instead become once again the military asset that it used to be, a Force Multiplier, to use a very ancient expression. It isn't soft to try to make military aircraft safe for their occupants, it's sound military thinking. Time we started getting more of that in the High Command, instead of yet more of these endlessly smooth presentations.