J1N
Correct J1N but the two are inextricably linked because those who cynically exploit have most to lose if the airworthiness failings and consequences are exposed to detailed scrutiny. They are permitted to judge their own case, so concocted the "pause" nonsense. In doing so, they protect their predecessors/mentors, to whom they owe their current position.
The systemic problems that caused the basic failures are actually well known and documented - simply an extension of the failings confirmed by Haddon-Cave, who in turn merely summarised internal MoD audit reports from 1988, 1992 and 1996 (but attributed them to 1998).
The Inspectorate of Flight Safety issued their own report in 1992, the first (that we know of) in a series of damning such reports which all said the same thing. Implement your regulations. As Engines said, it's not a hard thing to do. The same thing happened back then. The persons to blame were the recipients of the report, so got away with burying it. It emerged in 2011, MoD's Controller Aircraft from the time inadvertently revealed he'd never seen it, and it immediately became the most significant evidence to Lord Philip - and MoD lost another case. (A recurring theme, and it never learns).
MoD always seek to compartmentalise these things, claiming isolated event. It isn't. It's all part of the same malaise. This glider issue is not new. I've seen the report that warned of it from about 7 years ago. I suspect this was prepared after the Nimrod Review, when a degree of panic reigned as IPTs sought to work out how bad their own situation was. As has been suggested here before, I believe the Air Staff would have prioritised corrective action. (At least those few who weren't in denial. I wonder if they have given any thought to their post-Nimrod Review claims that there have never been airworthiness failings?) The "top down" approach was to establish the MAA. Over 6 years later, it is still in its infancy and essentially toothless. But as the problems were well documented, a "bottom up" approach was easy to implement, but would require political will, funding and, importantly, serious engineering expertise. This has not been MoD policy since 1990, when specialist airworthiness staff were deemed the "rump end of MoD(PE)" and given transfer notices as they'd nothing to do, as funding was being chopped. It was said at the time that it would take decades to recover from this act.