JTO,
I'd like to sincerely and fully apologise if it appeared that I was criticising the pilots in the RTSA in any way. My concerns lie with the ownership of the RTSA, and the basic function of an ACAS owned RTSA with the advent of the DH system. Expert pilot input into the RTSR is absolutely vital to a decent product.
I have had the pleasure of working with a set of absolutely outstanding RAF SO2s in the RTSA over the past few years. As ever, once you get to the working level (and by that I mean SO2) my experience is that you find dedicated and very able service personnel doing the very best job they can.
But JTO opens up a very important point, which is the relationship between the RTSA and the DE&S staffs providing the product. I absolutely agree that RTSA must not try to 'police' the DE&S. It's absolutely not ACAS's job to do that. MAA regulate the DE&S (and everybody else in the airworthiness chain), and also carry out a 'policing' function of sorts. However, any organisation MUST (do discharge its safety management obligations) have an effective internal system to assure delivery of safe products.
I do think (and have advised teams so) that DE&S should consider setting up a more effective internal project review system to ensure that its teams are doing what they should be. If an effective and thorough process is followed (and as Tuc often points out, it's not an especially hard thing to do - just work the detail, record the results and properly manage the risk) ten there should be no room for the sort of shenanigans that JTO describes.
Despite the hammering they often get in these forums, BAE Systems have a very effective 'phase review' system where projects get very thoroughly 'peer reviewed' by qualified and trained experts at a number of stages. I've taken projects through these and it's my considered conclusion that if DE&S ran something along these lines, many of the problems described would be bowled out at an early stage. It would also help prevent the 'integrity' issues you describe. I do think that DE&S could learn a thing or two from it.
Best Regards as ever to all those hard working SO2s doing the spadework,
Engines
Engines