Sarn1e,
That's what I'm talking about. The RAF/MoD is so institutionally setup to accept routine failures as normal. When you see what it could be like it is all rather depressing. Especially as when the operators say "it's not that bad" what motivation has the MoD to produce the goods?
The RAF, and this is as prevelant with the Typhoon, operates with so many deferred faults that it is rare to see a fully mission capable aircraft on the line. Something that was uncommon during my exchange.
It's all a bit sad really.
The problem with Typhoon that normal RAF issue, Lack of spares. Electronics items fail, especially when they are pushed to the limit as regards space, weight and being thrown around the skies with G loading that would kill most civil electronic kit in minutes. The other thing about comparing the US and UK maintenance systems (correct me if i'm wrong here, GK121) is the US Avionics guys tend to be specialists in one aspect of the aircraft's systems (They will be a radar, a radio, an instrument or electrical system specialists) while the RAF have somebody who has to know the whole lot (where in the past the RAF avionics trade had some form of separation of those 4 specialists). If something goes wrong on the line, they have a much deeper understanding of that particular bit of kit. Having had two amalgamations of trade within my service period, I know for a fact that it caused issues, best summed up by this video.
MAINJAFAD also has a point on the "design & make" aspect. The AN/ALQ-126 Defensive ECM system on the A-6E (and other aircraft) was a very low MTBF item in the early 1980s-with MTBRs around 10 hours. The LRU was a two-deck box, full of circuit boards that were covered with IC chips. When Sanders developed the -126, they "had a brilliant idea" - to "make maintenance easier", they put almost all of the IC chips in plug-in sockets (the sockets were soldered to the boards). Over 90% of failures were cleared by "simply" reseating all of the >300 IC chips in the LRU - a process which took several hours, but which had to be done, as invariably in each LRU there were multiple chips that had vibrated loose enough to break connection - despite the "hold-down clamps" Sanders had installed to prevent that.
Don't know if the British MoD ever did that in an airborne system, definitely did it with a transportable ground based Air Defence Radar, After the radar was moved from A to B, the operators tried to run it up and found it wouldn't work. On opening the racks up, the RAF Technicians found piles of IC's laying at the base of the racks.