From Flight Global today:
The UK Military Aviation Authority (MAA) expects to within weeks reach a decision on the airworthiness of the Royal Air Force’s RC-135W Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft, which should be introduced operationally from later this year.
US company L-3 Communications is modifying three 1964-vintage KC-135R tankers to the Rivet Joint signals intelligence-gathering configuration for the RAF, with the first having been delivered to its Waddington air base in Lincolnshire last November. The aircraft has not been flown again since its arrival, as certification activities continue.
“We’ve been given some big boxes of paperwork, and our team will take 20 working days to assess Airseeker and the release to service recommendation,” says Air Marshal Dick Garwood, director general of the MAA. “Then we will tell ACAS [the assistant chief of the air staff] what we think about this aeroplane: is it safe, or is it not.”