Engines, your gentle disagreement is gently acknowledged. In reality it is more a difference in emphasis, and I absolutely agree that the ACO fleet needs to get airborne ASAP to continue its vital work in ensuring tomorrow's engineers and aircrew for HM Forces, particularly the RAF.
My problem with your long term approach is that the "Savings at the Expense of Safety" were made to compensate for AMSO's disastrous 1987 policy of disposing of bulk spares holdings. The inevitable consequence of massive cost increases was entirely self induced and independent of government policy. That is why the previously ring fenced Air Safety budgets were plundered. It was not the British Establishment that initiated this scandal but RAF VSOs. The Establishment's part was, and still is, the subsequent cover-up. My solution to the crisis, to make regulator and investigator independent of the MOD, will by definition require the Establishment to acknowledge cause and effect and hence end the cover-up.
My two-penneth worth as to how to do that is to keep it simple; sistering the MAA with the CAA and the MilAAIB with the AAIB, with civilian heads to both. Obviously it won't be simple at all, but at least the respective Director Generals can then be free to perform their duties unmolested and begin the very long haul back to ensuring UK Military Airworthiness again. At the moment there is no such freedom to do that.
May I also endorse the book linked to by tucumseh? The author not only reveals where the real gross negligence lay in the 1994 Mull of Kintyre tragedy, but how it was not unique to that terrible loss of 29 lives, nor unique to that fleet, but to UK Military Aviation as a whole. Which brings us back to the ACO fleet...