POBJOY:-
With no 'changes' to the upper 'management' how is the system supposed to heal itself for the future.
It was 'upper management' that sabotaged UK Military Airworthiness in the first place, mainly in the form of RAF VSOs. Ever since then 'Upper Management' has engineered a cover up which not only prevented the truth being discovered by various BoI's into airworthiness related fatal air accidents, but ensured that UK Military Airworthiness remained compromised and dysfunctional to this present day. Indeed, it has worsened over the years, as the missing and incomplete documentation that is the very essence of ensuring continuing airworthiness has dragged many more fleets into this morass.
You may well ask how simple structures such as the ACO gliders should fall foul of this scandal The answer is that simple gliders or complex systems (such as ejection seats), all require that continuous paper trail to prove that all that is right has been done, and all that is wrong has not been. Without that assurance unintended ejections, spontaneous explosions following AAR, collisions between aircraft using illegally fitted HISLs, blue on blue shoot downs and, to this day, unexplained impact into rising ground, can and have caused avoidable deaths; 63 killed in airworthiness related fatal accidents featured in this forum alone.
If the MOD had taken its primary responsibility as UK Military Air Regulator to heart and ensured that airworthiness be returned to the UK Military Airfleet, rather than protecting those who had initiated this scandal, many of those lives would have been saved. It didn't and they weren't. Thank your own AOC for grounding his fleet before more lives joined that count!
The only solution to reinstating military airworthiness is to make the Regulator and Investigator separate from the MOD and from each other. At the moment the DG DSA is responsible, inter alia, for assuring UK Military Airworthiness and for Investigating the lack of it! Even Sir Humphrey would baulk at such effrontery.
All of this edifice built upon sand was the result of the biggest lie ever told regarding Air Safety; the Haddon-Cave Report. It is quoted as holy script, instead it is a travesty of history and a formula for failure.
It will be a long hard road to rebuild military airworthiness so the sooner that first step is taken the better, which must be to march out of the morass that is the MOD. Those that complain about the CAA (I certainly have in my time!) and EASA should reflect that whatever their shortcomings, they never set out to subvert the very Regulations for which they are responsible. The MOD did, and good people died.
Like others have said, I am indebted to tucumseh and Engines for their knowledgeable and experienced contributions. I know that there are many others like them, qualified and dedicated engineers, who daily see the depths to which UK Military Air Safety has sunk. Please add your thoughts to this thread. You will be surprised how many will read what you have to say and take note.
Self Regulation Never Works, and in Aviation It Kills!