BWM:-
There are no winners - except perhaps the bean-counters (in the short term).
Never was a truer word spoken. This sorry mess was initiated in 1987 when a disastrous short term AMSO policy led directly to the plundering of the previously ring fenced Air Safety budgets. Once started the pillage had to continue. Those who would not obey illegal orders to suborn the regulations had to be got rid of, and with them went the accumulated knowledge and experience of decades. Those engineers were replaced by administrators and soon the corporate memory was wiped completely clean.
Airworthiness is a continuous process. Interrupt it, ignore it, pay lip service to it, and the results are inevitable. 63 lives lost in airworthiness related fatal military air accidents in PPRuNe featured threads alone. MOD's efforts to pin the blame on aircrew, on senior officers, and now on companies, are its desperate attempts to obscure the truth, that all this was caused by the Gross Negligence of certain RAF VSO's, and then covered up by other succeeding RAF VSO's. Quite apart from the price paid in blood and treasure they have dishonoured the Service which has promoted them to such august ranks.
This has to stop. There must be an end to these avoidable tragedies. The MAA and MilAAIB must be made independent of the MOD, and of each other, and the long and painful reform of UK Military Airworthiness set in motion.
Let right be done!