why ?
Arclite01 the answer to your question is that the maintenance contractor was simply not up to the job, the management was lax, the people working on the aircraft had insufficient guidance and in some cases skill, the management also lacked leadership skills. You can also add a bit of good old fashioned trade union obstructiveness with a sprinkling of elf & safety political correctness. Add to this a total lack of the commercial drive that the military lacks and that keeps the civil world on its toes.
The reason for the poor management of the project is that the upper management was not prepared to pay the going rate for the job and so put people into roles that they did not have the skills and experience to forefill.
The cream of the joke is the upper management still don't get it !
They are advertising vastly under paid jobs that assumes that they will get the glider recovery project. There are at least two other defence contractors who are looking at this contract and one of them is offering the going rate for one of the positions ( just over £10k above the rate advertised by the current contractor ).
Only with people with the correct experience of project management along with a detailed knowlage of composite maintenance, repair and airworthiness oversight will the recovery program be a success.
I am confident that the RAF see this very clearly but the big question is can they get the cost past the bean counters ?