Surely this is what risk management is all about?
Well, it's about identifying the risk, mitigating it and preventing recurrence. Importantly, assessing whether it applies elsewhere and preventing compartmentalisation.
In this case, the basic risk (flat refusal to implement mandated regs) was identified, but neither mitigated nor recurrence prevented. So, it has happened again, and again. The same risks have recurred with monotonous regularity; the issue I have is that some have mitigated them with effortless competence, while others have ignored them or failed miserably to mitigate them. Yet MoD prefer to endorse the latter while vilifying the former.
If he accepts that we can never achieve the safety case that you, DV and Chug want
No, it is the Safety Case HE DEMANDS, and legislates for in law. DV, Chug and myself merely point out that his predecessors have ruled that VSOs were correct in issuing orders that this legislation, and the direct orders they were under from SofS, could be ignored and false declarations made that they had been implemented.
I infer from this that you do not see a need for a compliant Safety Case, so perhaps you could offer an alternative? I have said before, if he signs a waiver and a viable alternative means of assuring safety is agreed, then I'm fine with that. What worries me is that this programme is some years old now, the first aircraft was delivered last October (?), and here we are 6 months later asking for a waiver of supposedly mandated regulations. If MoD had identified all the risks (as they claim), and they could not be mitigated, why was the request for waiver not on Ainsworth's desk all those years ago? As I said before, no-one in MoD has the authority to proceed with expenditure under such circumstances. (Or, even if Bernard Gray has been granted such authority recently, then he'd be foolish to sign given the "novel and/or contentious" nature of the risk. And given his background, I wonder if he CAN be granted such delegation? Or if he even wants it!).