"Dare I ask......have the problems been corrected so that the spares system is providing air worthy parts and procedures to the Engineers? Is the Training system doing its job to provide fully qualified Engineers?"
Spares:
In short: Mainly...yes.
Not necessarily limited to the helicopter fleets; but there is no money in MOD now - and U/S parts are often "retained" as possible future repairable resources -and probably without repair requests to justify keeping them there.
My concern, when I worked for an MOD contract, was that the Cat4/5 U/S parts were retained too close to flight line units that might see them, pick them out of their Bins and use them again.
Training:
In Short: Mainly...yes.
Current training for new guys gives the right information and practices. But as soon as they get to real "Lines" they are re-trained into "How we do it here".
My theory is that those at the Line have not been re-trained with the right information, because of Ops driven requirements, and have spent the last 10-15 years doing it the War Ops way.
I hope that, when the War finishes, the right way will slowly dawn on those riding on the seats and they will want this form of life preservation back under control.