Agreed Nab, but Regulation is also an oversight function, leading to enforcement when required. If that simple process had continued unhindered in the late 80's, instead of have being utterly subverted, then this and other airworthiness threads here might never have been needed.
Who did the subversion? The operator, aka the MOD, aka certain known VSO's. Their actions have been reported to Parliamentary Committees, MPs, Ministers, SOS's, Judicial Reviews, the media, and the police (both civil and military). The result is that they remain unmolested and unchallenged. Is the moral to draw from this that nothing can be done? Not in my book, on the contrary it suggests that plenty must be done, in order to avoid any further subversion.
Just as the MAAIB must be independent so must the MAA, and both must be manned by professionals that place their jobs above their careers. That means civilian DGs heading up both, and service personnel who are seconded so that their CoC is through those DGs and not the Services.
The MAAIB is an equally important check in such a system, but only kicks in when the system has already failed. Rather than seek merely to avoid further failures, far better to avoid them in the first place, especially when the failure infects a whole fleet, or many fleets. That is why both the MAA and MAAIB should be independent of each other as well as of the MOD.
You are right though, the key is in trained and experienced engineers in both organisations. The very people who were got rid of by RAF VSO's.
The point of all this is to maintain operational capability and not have it frittered away by avoidable accidents and compromised fleets, both of which exist now.