Olympia,
Perhaps I can help out a bit here.
Tuc beat me to it with his excellent post - yes, the civil servants there in the PE were expected to carry out their duties within the mandated regulations, not to do the bidding of service officers. Most procurement disasters start with a c**p set of requirements, and there's a BIG problem with the role and competence of the MoD's Requirements Managers, and the RAF's long standing insistence that they be uniformed aircrew. Sadly, the skill set of the average RAF pilot (which is very good indeed - for flying aircraft) is a poor match for doing Requirements Management, which is really an engineering discipline. If the uniformed RM and the CS project engineer work together, this issue can, in some cases, be overcome. Sometimes it can't.
Where the issue gets worse is where senior officers in the RAF decide that they have identified the solution to their (often unstated) requirements, and tell the PE to 'go out and buy that'. That's part of the gliders issue. The RAF decided that they wanted Grobs, and directed the PE to go for an essentially 'off the shelf' purchase. Even worse, a large part of the buy was done using an 'in year underspend', where the PE staffs will have got even LESS time to do the parts of procurement that aren't as sexy as buying spanking new aircraft, but are just as important.
Things like making sure that a comprehensive repair manual has been issued. making sure that the customer has been provided with DA approved repair kits. Things like making sure that the aircraft supplier had passed the relevant certification and approvals stages. Things like making sure that a proper PDS contract was in place. Oh, and ensuring that there was an achievable fleet management scheme. I'm taking a small bet that these were the things that didn't get done well for the gliders.
The sad fact is that the MoD has spent most of the 15 to 20 years following a policy of removing professional engineers from the procurement organisation. For many years, project management has been the preferred skill set. Now, there's nothing wrong with having professional PMs. Sadly, the MoD decided that doing a Prince2 course turned non-engineers into professional project managers. No, it didn't.
So you now have non-technical PMs trying to manage projects with restricted access to professional project engineers. In recent years, that skill set has often been provided using contractors - the Treasury has now all but closed off that supply route.
It's not all doom and gloom, and the MoD has plenty of good people to manage procurement. But, in my view, not enough of them.
Best regards as ever to those doing the job at the coal face
Engines