Nimrod crash in Afghanistan Tech/Info/Discussion (NOT condolences) [Archive] - Page 7

fergineer

22nd May 2009, 04:59

TD. I started flying the Nimrod 30 odd years ago and having been taught by some of the best instructors that I have had the privilage to meet was fully aware of the good and bad points of the aircraft that I flew in. As a trade the Air Engineer prides himself on his or her technical knowledge of their given aircraft and many a visit to NMSU by the training people ensured that we were kept up to date with what was going on with the aircraft......I am sure the same thing goes on today......the rest of the crew were specialists in their fields and pilots very often chipped in with their knowledge of the aircraft systems too so saying that crews did not fly with the full knowledge of what was going on shows just what you think of the crews that flew and are still flying the Nimrod. They are out and out professionals who would stand shoulder to shoulder with the best. Dont degrade their skills by saying they dont know or understand the aircraft ....they trust me know a lot more than you are being led to believe.
As for trivalising fuel leaks......who has said that is what I am trying to do, it is you who is throwing out the statistics without knowing what type of fuel leak that has been reported so I think you are using the wrong word there. I have had an aircraft full of fuel when the basket fell off a trailled hose....we could have had more problems but we didnt maybe we were lucky, what did we do the ground crew fixed the aircraft we flew it again in full knowledge that the same thing could happen again, same as the next Nimrod and subsequent crews have done since the day your son died.
We all choose the career that we do and in full knowledge of what could happen, we know that the aircraft that we are flying are old and really do need replacing but at the moment they are staying and as a profession we do our jobs......if the aircraft were as bad as you make them out trust me they would not fly them there are many ways of getting out of flying if they wanted too.
You are on a crusade for your son I can understand that but dont try and take the professionalism out of the crews in doing so. Let you son be remembered for who he was and not for what his father did.

tucumseh

22nd May 2009, 06:04

The way I read TD’s posts, he is emphasising the fact that MoD continually maintained that the previous rate of leaks on the aircraft was acceptable, and did little or nothing about it; a position that is now seen to be untenable following the Coroner’s damning verdict.

This is supported by the ongoing modification / amelioration programme which, as he says, has reduced this rate.

If I were in his position, I’d be consumed by anger that it took a non-MoD civilian (himself) and a Coroner to force MoD to implement their own regulations – which they had criminally and steadfastly refused to do for many years. I maintain that any ire should be directed toward those who failed in this duty of care. They are well known, although I concede the main perpetrators are now retired. (Thankfully). But it is important to understand this background and who they are, because they wilfully ignored direct warnings that Airworthiness was being compromised across all fleets. The common factors between Nimrod, C130, Chinook, Sea King and the rest demonstrate that beyond all doubt, and their legacy still lives on. That is why it is important that Mr Haddon-Cave’s review addresses these wider problems; not just Nimrod.

TD doesn’t benefit. Current and future aircrew do, aircrew I have never once seen or heard him denigrate. I think he will be remembered for the good he did (but I concede the anti-airworthiness brigade will hate him with a vengeance while they play their tennis). Time will pass and the detail will be forgotten. But perhaps at least the Nimrod community will always recall their world was made a safer place by one mans actions.

GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU

22nd May 2009, 08:13

TD doesn’t benefit. Current and future aircrew do

Sorry, you're right: we keep forgettihg that.

Nimrod families may get 'close to £1m' compensation - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/2463575/Nimrod-families-may-get-close-to-1m-compensation.html)

tucumseh

22nd May 2009, 08:31

Quote:
Originally Posted by tucumseh

TD doesn’t benefit. Current and future aircrew do

Sorry, you're right: we keep forgettihg that.

Nimrod families may get 'close to £1m' compensation - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/2463575/Nimrod-families-may-get-close-to-1m-compensation.html)

Nice.

Go home tonight and ask the wife and family - Who do you think is the better man? Graham Knight, who lost a son and fought the MoD's refusal to apply its own airworthiness regs, or the halfwits who ruled, year after year, that airworthiness was optional and/or a waste of money.

Then ask her what amount of money would compensate for the loss of your child.

Then duck, because if she's got an ounce of decency she'll smack you one.

FE Hoppy

22nd May 2009, 11:31

This crusade dishonours all those who have fought and died in the armed services. Most of us joined because we wished to SERVE queen and country. We all pledged to do so on day one. If that means operating outside of civilian standards, using our own judgement as to what is acceptable risk for the task at hand, accepting that sometimes there are greater needs than the self then that's what we joined up for and took pride in being part of. It's what separates servicemen from the civilian population.

Tappers Dad

22nd May 2009, 13:56

FE Hoppy
I take it you don't believe in Human Rights or that the RAF/MOD has a duty of care. Perhaps you think the families of the Six Red Caps killed by a mob in Iraq in 2003 because they had been given antiquated radios and inadequate ammunition shouldn't complain about it.

As Reg Keys, who lost his son Tom was one of the Redcaps said, their deaths had been caused by negligence.

"Yes, we accept the risk a soldier takes.

"For goodness' sake, give them the equipment to do their job.

"To withhold that equipment and send them into a hostile town boils down to a lack of duty of care and a cavalier attitude to the safety of these men."

Does his crusade dishonour those who have fought and died ?

You remind me of Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup) in the film A Few Good Men part of his speech was"
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I prefer you said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!"

http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/media/89869/postcard_microsite_htc.jpg

FE Hoppy

22nd May 2009, 17:23

TD.
I am neither an actor nor script writer. Please do not belittle me by comparing my opinion to that of a fictional character in a movie.
I served on 201 sqn crew 1.

Chugalug2

23rd May 2009, 15:50

FE Hoppy:

This crusade dishonours all those who have fought and died in the armed services

Of all the blinkered and insulting posts in this oft ill-tempered thread this one surely takes the biscuit. That you could even contemplate posting it says far more about your entrenched position than I ever could. My Dad died serving in WW2. He was not dishonoured by this campaign any more than Tapper was by his Dad. Shame on you.

davejb

23rd May 2009, 16:18

Sometimes TD does overdo it,
not being as familiar with the aircraft itself as some he does, on occasion, make a mountain out of a molehill. Personally I think that he's entitled to do so, not only because he lost his son but because I honestly believe that without his continual banging on about the Nimrod the MOD would most definitely have tried to sweep it all under the carpet. I believe that Nimrod today is a lot safer than it would have been without TD's (and others) efforts and outrage.

I suspect, but have no way of knowing, that Nimrod is currently safe - that TD is now making a mountain from a molehill - but I think we should perhaps bear in mind that a lot of people thought the same back when he was making a mountain out of a mountain....

I think TD has earned rather more patience - yes, sometimes what he writes annoys me too, but I'll put up with that in exchange for the birght light he and others have shone in dark corners. Perhaps we might all remember that as professionals we all blithely flew around with (essentially) an unprotected source of combustion in close proximity to a fuel supply for an awful long time, knowing sweet fanny adams about it at all - you can only be professional with the knowledge you actually have, you cannot offset lack of knowledge with professionalism, the world doesn't actually work like that.

Dave

Biggus

23rd May 2009, 17:37

davejb

Good post - which I totally agree with!

davejb

23rd May 2009, 19:02

Cheers Biggus,
and as many will tell you, including Fergieneer (a fine engineer, but now we're thousands of miles apart a crap folksinger <g>) I'm a lot more cogent online than in real life....

Please folks, remember that we don't advance through brilliant insight, we learn by our mistakes, and as we make those mistakes we probably p*ss the majority off. Anyhow, it's Saturday, what the **** are we doing on a bulletin board?

Dave

Chugalug2

23rd May 2009, 19:19

Biggus:
davejb

Good post - which I totally agree with!

I'll second that, if I may?

Squidlord

7th Aug 2009, 08:27

Air Commodore George Baber, who was Team Leader for the Nimrod IPT at the time of the Nimrod crash, has been moved from his post as the MoD's top man for aviation safety (Head of Air Systems and Defence Quality).

I find it hard to imagine that it doesn't have something to do with one or both of the fairly imminent (October, probably) publication of Haddon-Cave's Nimrod Review report and the appointment of Air Vice Marshall Charles Ness above Baber to coordinate the MoD's response to that report.

Tappers Dad

7th Aug 2009, 11:15

Mmmmmm I know Air Commodore George Baber, who was Team Leader for the Nimrod IPT, perhaps it is him being in charge of the Kipper Fleet that really makes this very fishy indeed.

Thanks for the heads up Squidlord. I think a few major players at the time might start retiring off to distant shores before long. Torpys gone now Baber moved who's next I wonder?

nigegilb

7th Aug 2009, 12:51

TD, you probably just need the distribution list for the salmon letters.......

Many high up figures both mil and MoD civ have already been moved on or "retired" - allegedly.

betty swallox

7th Aug 2009, 13:49

Sorry, Nige. What's the allegedly. Your comment is misleading and untrue.
TD. There's nothing unsavoury about those two individuals moving on. It's as simple as the Tour Review Date. The end. You're barking up the wrong tree.

nigegilb

7th Aug 2009, 13:57

Not according to my info BS.

Wrathmonk

7th Aug 2009, 16:18

Do share nige ....

Tappers Dad

7th Aug 2009, 18:01

Squidlord

Hang on a minute on the FAQ page of the Nimrod Review it says

What technical support does Mr Haddon-Cave have?
Mr Haddon-Cave will call upon expertise from a variety of sources. He has appointed Air Vice-Marshal Charles Ness, a Serving RAF officer and senior engineer,as a technical advisor. Group Captain Nick Sharpe, a serving RAF officer and former President of the Board of Inquiry into the loss of XV230, is also providing assistance. Additional experts will be appointed as required.

So if what you say is true Air Vice-Marshal Charles Ness is helping to do the report then he is going to coordinate the MoD's response to that report.!!!!!!

If thats the case something needs looking into me thinks.

Chugalug2

7th Aug 2009, 18:11

Well spotted TD, I think you've just sussed how it all works in MB. The other way it all works is that 2* and above are protected no matter what. Of course those below that rank....

nigegilb

7th Aug 2009, 18:16

I understand salmon letters might well be threatening the line that 2 stars and above and civilian equiv automatically receive the cloaking protection.

Only time will tell..

Squidlord

8th Aug 2009, 16:45

S'funny, I checked the Haddon-Cave website after my last post and I saw the bit about Ness being an advisor as well (for the first time). I don't think Ness has been long in his current MoD post but I don't know how long he's been an advisor to HC. It doesn't feel quite right to me, either.

Incidentally, Baber's move was done at short notice and without a planned succession. Doesn't sound like a normal end of tour to me.

Distant Voice

15th Aug 2009, 17:59

Having re-read Baber's sworn inquest statement, it is it full of "Not me chief it was my team wot did it"

On Baber's watch the IPT (1) declared that dry bay No.7 had fire detection and suppression (2) re-activated the SCP, knowing that several ducts were life expired (3) posted the hazard as being managed/closed, even though electrical investigation work was outstandaing, and (4) downgraded the hazard from categaory "B" to "C", without the the IPTL knowing the reason.

Finally, he was happy to declare that "I steered fairly well clear of the Board of Inquiry". Question is, why did the BOI not drag him in to make a statement?

I for one hope that his serious errors are highlighted in the QC's report, and a suitable punishment recommendend.

DV

airsound

22nd Oct 2009, 12:21

The Nimrod Review Final Report will be laid before Parliament on Wed 28 Oct 2009.

Charles Haddon-Cave QC will give an on-camera briefing at Grays Inn, probably at 1315 - but at any rate after his report has been laid before Parliament. I’m assuming that the families will have had special access beforehand.

Journos will be ‘locked-in’ (carrier pigeons confiscated etc) from 1245. I’m going to the lock-in and briefing. If anyone has a point that they’d like raised, I’ll be happy to hear from them - either by PM or otherwise.

airsound

airsound

23rd Oct 2009, 17:59

Thanks to everyone who responded. (Including some current Nimrod aircrew, incidentally)

The major broadcasters are almost certainly going to be there. Although of course if something really important comes up (somebody doing something dreadful on Big Brother perhaps) then they may not be able to cover it.

I understand that the families are going to be briefed beforehand, in another place that they are not allowed to reveal. But I guess some of them will want to speak to the media.

For everyone who believes that the military airworthiness system is bust - let's just hope that Mr H-C is able to pierce the prevailing fog and point to that conclusion.

airsound

On_The_Top_Bunk

28th Oct 2009, 13:07

BBC NEWS | UK | Nimrod review reveals 'failures' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8329117.stm)

Prevetable accident from Sky (http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Nimrod-A-New-Report-Into-The-Crash-In-Afghanistan-Which-Killed-14-Says-It-Was-Preventable/Article/200910415420827?lpos=UK_News_Carousel_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15420827_Nimrod%3A_A_New_Report_Into_The_Crash_I n_Afghanistan_Which_Killed_14_Says_It_Was_Preventable__)

For the full revew here (http://www.nimrod-review.org.uk/)

Download the PDF report (http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc0809/hc10/1025/1025.pdf)

On page 559 of the report the conclusions with regard to personnel issues. How many can you put a tick against? I would say all.

2. There are currently weaknesses in the area of personnel in the MOD, namely:
(1) Undervaluing and dilution of engineers and engineering skills.
(2) Engineers are not required to have professional status.
(3) Decline in the ability of the MOD to act as an “intelligent customer”.
(4) Turf wars and inter-service rivalries for jobs and roles.
(5) Short term two-year postings.
(6) Constant re-naming of posts.
(7) ‘Double-hatting’ and ‘gapping’.
(8) Lack of trained Safety Engineers.
(9) Selfishness, rewards and promotion for ‘change’.
(10) Shortage of manpower and skills fade.

BEagle

28th Oct 2009, 13:43

A military airworthiness system not fit for purpose

A safety case regime which is ineffective and wasteful

A safety culture that has allowed "business" to eclipse airworthiness

And what changes will now be made?

Alber Ratman

28th Oct 2009, 14:07

Something akin to the SRG of the CAA?? That is what Haddon Cave seems to be alluding to.

danieloakworth

28th Oct 2009, 14:29

Interesting that BAe and QinetiQ have both been named and shamed for their work on the Safety Case yet those ortganisation still produce 99% of platform Safety Cases (QQ doing Typhoon as we speak). Will MOD actually learn from this?

jumpseater

28th Oct 2009, 14:56

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_10_09_nimrod.pdf
Dont press print unless you've got a lot of paper...

Just watched the press statement live on Sky Telly news.

My guess is it sounds like HC is expecting an SRG 'type' of accountability and overview system to be established. See CH21 in report

21.1 The purpose of the Recommendations in this Chapter is to provide a blueprint to enable the MOD to develop a clear, coherent, comprehensive and comprehensible pan-MOD Military Airworthiness Regime to which everyone in the organisation can subscribe, which adopts elements of the Civil Model where there is self-evident benefit, and which demonstrably addresses Risk to Life without compromising capability, and which drives new attitudes, behaviours and a new Safety Culture. In both peacetime and in military operations, the military need to operate, in a safe manner, aircraft which are available, capable and safe.
An effective Airworthiness Regime which demonstrably assures and ensures this will take several years to mature. I recognise that implementation will be a major undertaking. The structural, substantive, cultural and behavioural changes required are significant. A sea-change in attitudes will be required. I am confident that the effort will be worthwhile in terms of Availability, Capability and Risk to Life

Many comments on the focus drift to 'budget target' rather than 'safety targets' in all three organisations MOD/BAe/Quinetic, across a number of quite specific years 98-06 which included significant defence reviews and BAe's downsizing/restructuring/job cuts in the commercial marketplace. (NB I mean as a business not whether supplying mil/civil contracts).

The Beebs expert, an ex Nimrod F/E? seems very competant. He stated there were a few surprises in the report. The anchor, (perfect ryhming slang in this case), asked what surprises there were?, to which the expert gave a brief summation of one example i.e a sentence about the possibilty of it being fuel re-entering the aircraft from an external leak. 'Ah yes but that's a specific point' says the '#anchor'... Quite how he didn't say 'thats what you :oh: asked for less than ten seconds ago' was beyond me, well played matey for the restraint shown. Maybe if they got James May to read the news when there's bits about technical stuff like machinery, may help the beeb to get a little bit of credibility in their news.
Skys bint was no better stating that HC had said the accident was 'unavoidable', whereas he said 'preventable'. Suggest at Skys chrimbo party they give her a dictionary as her pressy with instructions on how to use it.

Hopefully people will read the report rather than swallow beebsky wholesale dumbing down and misinterpretation which can reasonably be expected ..

Satellite_Driver

28th Oct 2009, 15:02

I sat down to have a quick skim of the report and an hour later, even on a cursory read-through, my blood is boiling.

I left the RAF two years ago after seventeen years as an engineering officer. (Comms-electronics rather than Aerosystems, but I did two nominally AS tours in my time.) This report comprehensively tears to pieces nearly every change foisted upon us during that period, not least of which was the almost fetishistic worship of change itself.

There's so much I want to say that it's probably best if I take the time to properly read and digest this report first. Even on a quick read-through, so many of the changes, bad decisions and cultural and organisational failures highlighted are ones that I and my fellow EngOs shook our heads at at the time. But if there's one phrase from the report that epitomises the decline in the RAF and MoD's engineering standards and culture in my time it is "...outsourced its thinking." (p11).

I took my ORD for several reasons. But one factor was my growing feeling that if a job required you to think (something pretty important for my job satisfaction) then it was assumed we'd outsource it to contractors. That, together with the removal of a specialised professional engineer career past my own rank, made me feel that the job I'd joined up to do was fast disappearing. Being told in a career brief that "the problem is that you're seen as an expert" was the last straw. Funnily enough, the Haddon-Cave report has quite a lot to say about engineering expertise, or rather the steady erosion of it.

green granite

28th Oct 2009, 15:13

From the Guardian: Haddon-Cave concluded that the plane "was lost because of a systemic breach of the military covenant brought about by significant failures on the part of all those involved. This must not be allowed to happen again."

In all, Haddon-Cave singled out 10 named individuals for criticism: five from the MoD, three from BAE Systems and two from QinetiQ.

RAF Nimrod crash was preventable, inquiry finds | World news | guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/28/nimrod-crash-inquiry-raf-afghanistan)

Melchett01

28th Oct 2009, 15:23

So between this and the Puma report, will people now start to take any notice when we say 'we' are now throroughly broken after years of non-stop thrashing??? :sad:

It's all well and good naming the various starred officers, but this is what you get when you politicise and transform a fighting service into a business. Wonder if the politicians are feeling twitchy? Probably not.

Chugalug2

28th Oct 2009, 15:41

Here, buried deep, is the possible flaw in Mr H-C's cunning plan:

Independent MAA but part of MOD

21.15 In my view, it is important that the MAA is independent but remains part of the MOD. There is a logical

argument which can be made for the MAA to be entirely separate from the MOD so that it can provide a
totally independent voice untrammelled by financial or political pressures. Given the failings identified in this
Report, I see force in this argument.
21.16 However, the military element adds an entirely different dimension to the picture. The MOD has the
responsibility for delivering a certain military capability and balancing risk with task. A military organisation
must be ‘risk sensible’ but not too ‘risk averse’. The MAA must understand and appreciate operational
relevance and, importantly, be seen by military operators to understand and appreciate this, if it is to enjoy
their confidence. In my view, it would not be sensible or practicable to position the MAA legally and physically
outside the MOD. Sufficient independence will be assured by having: (a) the MAA working direct for 2

nd PUS;

(b) a high-ranking 3-Star officer as Head of the MAA; (c) full time MAA Regulators who do not have other
potentially conflicting responsibilities,

i.e. do not have responsibilities for delivery which give rise to potential

conflicts of interest; (d) clear Regulations which spell out different roles and responsibilities and assure the
MAA’s independence and immunity; and (e) stronger links with the CAA and HSE, including non-executives
from such organisations sitting on an MAA board with an express responsibility to watch for, and report
annually, on the MAA’s independence from financial, political and operational pressures.

So the MAA will be independent of the MOD and yet a part of it. A Humphreyism if ever there were one. A bit like the "separate but equal" status of non-whites in Apartheid South Africa. The question I have of Mr Haddon-Cave is; "How will your arrangements prevent the RTS of a known unairworthy aircraft over the objections of Boscombe Down, as was the case with the Chinook HC Mk2?"

SRENNAPS

28th Oct 2009, 15:44

but this is what you get when you politicise and transform a fighting service into a business. Wonder if the politicians are feeling twitchy

And what of those serving that have fully embraced the business culture (in the name of change) I wonder if they are feeling twitchy?

BEagle

28th Oct 2009, 15:52

And what of those serving that have fully embraced the business culture (in the name of change) I wonder if they are feeling twitchy?

Nope - they will merely 'hear what you say' and 'run it up the flagpole' before 'imagineering the holistic synergy'.....:bored:

ian16th

28th Oct 2009, 16:19

This piece from the Telegraph says a lot to me.
He quoted a former senior RAF officer who told his inquiry: "There was no doubt that the culture of the time had switched."

"In the days of the RAF chief engineer in the 1990s, you had to be on top of airworthiness."

"By 2004 you had to be on top of your budget if you wanted to get ahead."
Bean Counters! :mad:

cynicalint

28th Oct 2009, 16:58

Can do, will do’ culture

13.72 The ‘Strategic Goal’ played straight into to the hierarchical, process-driven, but otherwise wholly admirable, ‘Can do, will do’ culture of the Armed Forces. Unfortunately, ‘Can do, will do’ became ‘Make Do’.

13.73 Every platform and department was expected to deliver its share, irrespective of special pleading. Ambitious officers on short two-year tours saw delivering, and being seen to deliver, whatever ‘change’, savings and efficiency targets that were demanded as the route to preferment.The zealots were on the fast track to promotion.

The report highlights the problems across the whole of the logistsics and procurement world; the consequences highlighted here quite rightly concentrate on Airworthiness failings but the criticisms also cut across promotion and the wholesale acceptance of the 'Business culture'.

Da4orce

28th Oct 2009, 17:05

What of any action against the named individuals? Used car Bob says that the serving RAF officers have been moved sideways (promoted in 1 case).

Some might say that this report suggests that working for the MOD (RAF), Qinetiq or BAE Systems allows individuals to get away with manslaughter.

14 men paid with their lives, the least we can expect is those responsible to pay with the loss of their jobs.

Currently the silence is deafening on this front! :mad:

insty66

28th Oct 2009, 17:09

Chap 24 is just like some-one has been earwigging in a Ground crew crewroom for the last ten years or so!

I hope it brings about the right kind of change and not the promotion chasing sort! Chap 24.10

pulse1

28th Oct 2009, 17:18

Chugalug2,

It seems to me that HC openly discusses the issues involved with an independent MAA very well and ackowledges the "force of your argument".

However, do you not feel that his demand for "(e) stronger links with the CAA and HSE, including non-executives from such organisations sitting on an MAA board with an express responsibility to watch for, and report annually, on the MAA’s independence from financial, political and operational pressures." meets your concerns very well?

Chugalug2

28th Oct 2009, 18:00

pulse1:

However, do you not feel that his demand for "(e) stronger links with the CAA and HSE, including non-executives from such organisations sitting on an MAA board with an express responsibility to watch for, and report annually, on the MAA’s independence from financial, political and operational pressures." meets your concerns very well?

In a word, pulse, no! I'm sorry to have to sound so churlish but the key word is Independent. To call it that and then confirm it is to be part of the MOD still is a nonsense, no matter what the justifications. This will still be Self Regulation and I'm sure you know my attitude to that well enough by now. The MOD has shown it is not to be trusted with Airworthiness, but now we see it still will be. Painting new titles on the doors and bringing in non execs from outside doesn't change that. They will simply be the fall guys next time there is a rumpus. The MOD philosophy seems to me to be Flight Safety costs money and is for wimps. Of course no-one will spell it out quite like that and will make sure to mouth the sort of platitudes we heard today from good ole Bob, but this won't change that nor the contempt for those in the "Airworthiness Empire". You know people like Boscombe Down. We are I'm afraid so near and yet so far. By the time that the MOD has "modded" this Review I'm afraid we'll be even further. Sad :(

unclenelli

28th Oct 2009, 18:49

BBC East Midlands Today have just show "Library Footage" of an R1 taxiing at Waddington and a E3-D!!!!!!

Muppets!

Cows getting bigger

28th Oct 2009, 19:02

I had thought about reading the whole report (I will when I get a spare weekend). However, the cover page seems to make a very clear summary

A FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP, CULTURE
AND PRIORITIES

AHORSE

28th Oct 2009, 19:03

Almost as bad as the local TV in the South West showing a graphic of a Nimrod refuelling from a wing pod of a 707 tanker (not even a 135)

Rigga

28th Oct 2009, 19:29

Chapter 21 Para 21.1
"The purpose of the Recommendations in this Chapter is to provide a blueprint to enable the MOD to develop a clear, coherent, comprehensive and comprehensible pan-MOD Military Airworthiness Regime to which everyone in the organisation can subscribe, which adopts elements of the Civil Model where there is self-evident beneﬁt, and which demonstrably addresses Risk to Life without compromising capability, and which drives new attitudes, behaviours and a new Safety Culture. In both peacetime and in military
operations, the military need to operate, in a safe manner, aircraft which are available, capable and safe. An effective Airworthiness Regime which demonstrably assures and ensures this will take several years to
mature. I recognise that implementation will be a major undertaking. The structural, substantive, cultural and behavioural changes required are signiﬁcant. A sea-change in attitudes will be required. I am conﬁdent that
the effort will be worthwhile in terms of Availability, Capability and Risk to Life."

I feel that this could raise the Game to the level of independance of the MAA by using (non-ex military) civil airworthiness surveyors as the regulatory body - This should (if the civil model is adopted properly) give a means of appeal against real or perceived incorrect decisions made by aircraft type IPT's/AOA's.

Unfortunately - that rules me out!

Fortissimo

28th Oct 2009, 19:53

Chug,
I think you might be encouraged by the fact that MOD is taking H-C seriously and that the degree of independence that H-C recommends is not something that he will have done lightly, especially given that he has not exactly been shy in the naming and shaming game. The key point is the cultural change required to make sure this never happens again. The other factor that will hold MOD to account will be the legal action from the families - this is going to cost MOD millions, and rightly so. This has a level of visibility that is unprecedented; H-C's report is arguably the most comprehensive investigation into the real causes of an accident that this country has conducted and it will be exceedingly difficult for MOD to try to water down his conclusions. I think we need to give it a month or two before condemning any follow-up action as doomed to failure - the Airworthiness empire now has more clout than at any time in recent memory, and there is nothing like the prospect of ending up in clink (as some of those named have been warned is a possibility) to keep people in line.

Safeware

28th Oct 2009, 20:00

Firstly, from prelim page 6:
DEDICATION
This report is dedicated to
Gary Wayne Andrews
Stephen Beattie
Gerard Martin Bell
Adrian Davies
Oliver Simon Dicketts
Steven Johnson
Benjamin James Knight
Leigh Anthony Mitchelmore
Gareth Rodney Nicholas
John Joseph Langton
Gary Paul Quilliam
Allan James Squires
Steven Swarbrick
Joseph David Windall

and their families and loved ones
in the hope and expectation that lessons will be
learned from their sacriﬁce.

because I share that hope.

However,
An effective Airworthiness Regime which demonstrably assures and ensures this will take several years to mature. I recognise that implementation will be a major undertaking. The structural, substantive, cultural and behavioural changes required are signiﬁcant.

Should not be underestimated. Despite the 2 years work that Bob A harped on about on C4 news, I think that there is a long way still to go to really start making headway on this. I bet there is more than one aircraft out there with the management hoping it doesn't crash, exposing financially driven risk management. Not that VPF isn't an issue to be considered, but "too difficult" shouldn't be the answer either.

I also don't want to see a draconian "Can't do that because of H&S" attitude either. I was at an airworthiness seminar a few months ago, and one of the speakers (not from the world of military aviation) highlighted the fact that the more successful organisations in his experience (oil being one) were more successful where they had a better understanding, safety culture and management of the risks involved.

sw

davejb

28th Oct 2009, 20:01

Chug,
I think H-C is talking (really) about an ideal - his description works really well IF you can accept the idea that a subsidiary organisation within a larger whole can be truly independent (ie the boss says what he and his minions think, not what they know their boss wants them to think), therefore you gain the advantages of your truly independent MAA whilst retaining the huge amount of real life operational experience that is still present in the RAF/MoD (although ever more diluted). Integrity is the word, unfortunately it is sometimes seen as being bloody minded and dismissed. On the other hand, sometimes it IS bloody mindedness of course...

Where I tend to agree with you is in the realisation that, in practical terms, nobody will ever really buck the trend when the higher organisation has a different priority. So his idea has merit, but would probably prove susceptible to the Sir Humphreys - on the downside a truly independent MAA will lose a lot of hands on, realtime, sharp end understanding.... which, in the long run, can you afford to lose? (The answer is neither, and it would take a much sharper knife than me to figure out how to achieve that).

Baber - how to put this politely... err, several old mates of mine were on 230, so I appreciate that it's old fashioned but kindly **** off and don't stop to collect the richly unearned pension enroute - and the same goes for every other named individual in that report. Mahy, from what I read, gradually gave up but started out okay - I can understand that, and sympathise to a degree, but the rest should now be drafting resignation letters and applying for self funded posts with Christian Aid in the Yemen.... let's face it, it won't last as long as the alternative, burning in hell, will it?

I could write pages of even more vitriolic stuff, but what's the point? H-C has put it all so much more eloquently more than I can, let's see what happens... oh yeah, sack Ainsworth as well, he's a useless git*.**
Dave

* sorry, but I felt obliged to note down what I'm sure we've all felt for a good while now... bit like shooting fish in a barrel I know, but I just felt compelled to say it...

** Legal disclaimer - re 'Useless Git' is a term of endearment intended solely to imply that the personage so described should not be provided with sharp implements, explosives, corrosives, or poisons due to the possibility of unintentional self harm or other unwarranted side effects resulting from the subjects unfortunately low IQ. On no account should the individual be placed in a position of responsibility, if accidentally ingested seek medical assistance immediately. Product may contain nuts.

Rigga

28th Oct 2009, 20:03

Bob the Blunderer said in his speech that MOD will respond by christmas! - So I'll assume the response is already ready...

nav attacking

28th Oct 2009, 20:46

The MOD will respond by Christmas...

Parliament in recess for Christmas and New Year...

New aircraft arrives...

Convenient timing eh?

By the way who was the chancellor when all the cost cutting was being forced upon the MOD?

Dimmer Switch

28th Oct 2009, 20:51

As someone has previously noted, Mr H-C has very eloquently stated much of what has previously been said (and undoubtedly will be said again) on this thread, but I was v. pleased by his inclusion, at para 15.58, of this:

"The fact that the Nimrod fleet has continued to fly successfully
in support of Coalition Forces, in the face of all these challenges, is a tribute to the cool professionalism and dedication of the RAF Nimrod community at RAF Kinloss and RAF Waddington and the strong leadership shown by the Station Commanders and Senior Executives. Both stations have, I know, received particular support over many trying and turbulent months from the three senior officers who have held the position of Air Officer Commanding No. 2 Group" [all individuals were named in the report, but I've omitted them here]

Da4orce

28th Oct 2009, 21:12

Of all the named individuals receiving criticism this one sticks in the throat the most....

Group Captain (now Air Commodore) George Baber

He was the leader of the Ministry of Defence integrated project team (IPT) responsible for a safety review of the RAF's Nimrods that took place between 2001 and 2005.

Mr Haddon-Cave accused Group Capt Baber of a "fundamental failure of leadership" in drawing up the "safety case" into potential dangers in the fleet.

He allowed himself to be distracted by other matters, failed to follow processes he himself introduced and did not take reasonable care in signing off the project, the report said.

Mr Haddon-Cave noted he appeared to have been more interested in "trumpeting" the fact that it was the first safety review of an old aircraft than ensuring its contents were correct.

He wrote: "He failed to give the NSC (Nimrod safety case) the priority it deserved. In doing so, he failed, in truth, to make safety his first priority."

Group Capt Baber has since been promoted and is still serving with the RAF.

From: 10 named and shamed over Nimrod crash - Home News, UK - The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/10-named-and-shamed-over-nimrod-crash-1810886.html)

zedder

28th Oct 2009, 21:17

Culture

16. The regrettable conduct of some of BAE Systems’ managers suggests that BAE Systems has failed to implement an adequate or effective culture, committed to safety and ethical conduct. The responsibility for this must lie with the leadership of the Company.

17. BAE Systems formalised its UK ethics policy in 2002, setting out five key principles of ethical business conduct: “accountability, integrity, honesty, openness and respect”. In my judgment, all five principles were breached in the present case.

Chapters 10 and 11 have been a truly jaw-dropping read. How many times have I heard their employees claim that the 'Waste of Space' nickname is unfair. In reality it looks like it might actually be kind.

Gp Capt L Mandrake

28th Oct 2009, 21:21

Just read 10 and 11 and I agree with Zedder.

Nice to see someone who recognises an iceberg as an iceberg and not a frozen water opportunity - well done H-C!

regards

LM

DESPERADO

28th Oct 2009, 21:36

The failures of BAE Systems in relation to the Nimrod Safety Case are legion: the project planning
was poor; the personnel involved were insufficiently trained and inexperienced; the general
approach was flawed from the outset, the task was wrongly regarded as essentially a documentary
exercise; there was no sensible priority given to the high risks; there was no continuity of personnel;
there was little operator input; the project management was inadequate; there was insufficient
guidance for staff; the man-hours estimate was inadequate; the task was inadequately resourced;
there was disagreement, confusion, and dissent between those involved as to how to proceed
Sound familar to anyone else working with them?

DESPERADO

28th Oct 2009, 21:40

And my personal favourite:

In my judgment, BAE Systems is a company in denial. Denial has been the hallmark of BAE Systems’ response,
both to the Nimrod Review and in respect of the XV230 incident itself. Denial of design defects; denial of fault
in respect of the NSC, other than minor errors; denial of mistakes, save with the benefit of ‘hindsight’; denial of
any real responsibility, causal or otherwise. This has been troubling and a cause of real concern for the Review.

I think that it is fair to say that this is not the only part of the company in such a state. BAE, in my experience, talks a good fight wrt Safety and Process, but when it comes down to it they don't deliver much more than hot air.

WasNaeMe

28th Oct 2009, 21:43

Yup..........

That would be an a resounding 'yes' to postings 1582 & 3 above

Squirrel 41

28th Oct 2009, 21:43

I was reading Section IV on the airworthiness under DLO/DPA and D&ES. Unbelievable. What a bunch of self-serving incompetent pusillanimous imbeciles - if you are drawing a pension, I hope we withdraw it, and if you've a shred of honour, you'd be writing a letter to HMTQ to remove your names from the list of Commissioned Officers.

Well done C H-C QC for putting faces to the faceless. Bravo!

Shame on those named and on those not named who must have contributed.

RIP to the 14 men of XV230 who were left to contend with the failures, lies and cover-ups of others. I'll be raising a glass to you and your families tonight, and as has already been pointed out by Safeware, may your sacrifice not be in vain.

S41

ian176

28th Oct 2009, 21:48

Whilst BAE SYSTEMS (or BAe as Jon Snow seemed to liek calling them earlier) don't come out across well, isn't it worrying that the company that provides the independent advice to the MoD doesn't even read the reports and just signs them? And even more worrying, (as discussed on another thread - think it was on the flight test forum) who is independent for QQ projects - oh yes themselves.....

Jackonicko

28th Oct 2009, 22:14

I don't know many of the individuals named, but both Malcolm Pledger and George Baber are good men, who have done good things, and I am profoundly uncomfortable at seeing them labelled in this way.

adminblunty

28th Oct 2009, 22:22

Does anyone know if the Corporate Manslaughter Act applies in this case? From my reading of the act it may just apply.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2007/pdf/ukpga_20070019_en.pdf

4 Military activities
(1) Any duty of care owed by the Ministry of Defence in respect of—
(a) operations within subsection (2),
(b) activities carried on in preparation for, or directly in support of, such
operations, or
(c) training of a hazardous nature, or training carried out in a hazardous
way, which it is considered needs to be carried out, or carried out in
that way, in order to improve or maintain the effectiveness of the armed
forces with respect to such operations,
is not a “relevant duty of care”.
(2) The operations within this subsection are operations, including peacekeeping
operations and operations for dealing with terrorism, civil unrest or serious
public disorder, in the course of which members of the armed forces come
under attack or face the threat of attack or violent resistance.
(3) Any duty of care owed by the Ministry of Defence in respect of activities
carried on by members of the special forces is not a “relevant duty of care”.
(4) In this section “the special forces” means those units of the armed forces the
maintenance of whose capabilities is the responsibility of the Director of
Special Forces or which are for the time being subject to the operational
command of that Director.

(I highlighted the text in red - Adminblunty)

I hope it does, it might concentrate a few minds in the future.

DESPERADO

28th Oct 2009, 22:24

Still reading through, up to p390 odd right now. To me the most fascinating thing about this report is the sheer depth and breadth of what Mr Haddon-Cave has looked at. He is linking directly decisions made after the SDR in 98,99 on reductions in budgets to the fate of XV230. He names names, and rightly so. Taking those names up to 4 star level.
But what he hasn't done clearly (yet, p390 etc..) has also served it up to the politicians and perm under secs in MoD and Treasury who are responsible for the culture of change change change and savings savings savings. As ACM Pledger states, he was posted into the job and told to get on with it, that doesn't absolve him of his responsibilities as a leader and an officer, but we, as officers, are servants of the state and it is the state (in the form of the politicians) that must take responsibility for the tasks that we are given.
Obviously in the interim the poor buggers in uniform are fighting a couple of wars so that one day Tone can be 'El Presidente' of the New Labour Republic of Europe. I worked in EC in MoD for less than 2 years and the number of eye catching initiatives to save money and restructuring for efficiency made everyone dizzy, we shouldn't be totally surprised (without condoning) that some in the DLO and sister organisations dropped the ball. Often there is just some spilt milk, no harm done just money wasted; horrifically in this case 14 priceless lives were taken away forever unecessarily. The answer is simple - if you want us to fight then fund us properly. If you don't want to fund us because of other budgetry pressures then don't ask us to fight. On the other hand, BAE and QQ have no bloody excuses whatsoever.

Tankertrashnav

28th Oct 2009, 22:28

This is all serious stuff, but just to show the MOD etc aren't the only incompetent organisations, the BBC 10 o'clock news had a huge placard below pictures of the 14 who died, which read "DAMMING REPORT" (sic).

Gawd save us :ugh:

Safeware

28th Oct 2009, 22:31

Admin blunty:

1 The offence
(1) An organisation to which this section applies is guilty of an offence if the way
in which its activities are managed or organised—
(a) causes a person’s death, and
(b) amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the
organisation to the deceased.
.
.
.
4 Military activities
(1) Any duty of care owed by the Ministry of Defence in respect of—
(a) operations within subsection (2),
.....
is not a “relevant duty of care”.

edited.... However....
2 Meaning of “relevant duty of care”
(1) A “relevant duty of care”, in relation to an organisation, means any of the
following duties owed by it under the law of negligence—
(a) a duty owed to its employees or to other persons working for the
organisation or performing services for it;
(b) a duty owed as occupier of premises;
(c) a duty owed in connection with—
(i) the supply by the organisation of goods or services (whether for
consideration or not),

... may apply to BAES, but then I'd ask a lawyer.

sw

PPRuNeUser0139

28th Oct 2009, 22:33

I think this tragedy has shown what folly it was to:

1. Set up the IPTs with their unrealistic cash saving targets and inexperienced staff
&
2. Privatise the scientific establishments, thus giving the IPTs the choice of whether or not to take the technical advice.. (Guess which one they'd choose?) The IPT attitudes quoted in the report towards QinetiQ are all too familiar (any QQ initiative to flag up a problem being met with cynicism..)

I've worked on both sides (military & defence contractor) but it's too late now to put the genie back in the bottle.

I refuse to believe the audit trail stops upwards at General Sir Sam Cowan (CDL) as the report seems to suggest.

the funky munky

28th Oct 2009, 22:39

Ref post 1579 and Jackonicko's comments.

Not sure if any chaps were aware but Air Cdre Baber was the head of airworthiness assurance and approval and was, according to the grapevine, moved sideways about 2-3 months ago due to the perceived fallout from the Haddon-Cave report.
Not sure what message that gives to you, but to me it appears he is guilty as charged of prioriting the saving of money over the lives of people under his duty-of-care oh well he got his thick band off of it. As IPTL he was directly responsible. IMHO any TL who is found culpable deserves their time in the dock.

Well on the plus side he won't be allowed to place any more lives in peril.

Finnpog

28th Oct 2009, 22:40

Newsnight covering the report now.

BA is to be interviewed / allowed to spout tosh.

Roland Pulfrew

28th Oct 2009, 22:46

Newsnight covering the report now.

Good effort by Paxo. I think he could have driven the point a little harder regarding all those who have set "savings targets" that ultimately has been the cause of this. I include PUS and 2nd PUS in this, as they are the ones that generally issue each years "savings targets". But the buck should not stop there, it goes all the way up to the Treasury and the Chancellor. And that includes the person who was the Chancellor during the period in question....... How did Clarkson describe him?

Anyone else noticed how Bob Aintworthit keeps spouting on about "efficiency measures" rather than "savings"?!! As though that makes it sound more acceptable. :ugh:

Guzlin Adnams

28th Oct 2009, 22:48

Watching Blakey Ainsworth now. There appears to be a dearth of honour.
Where's Brown!

Gp Capt L Mandrake

28th Oct 2009, 22:55

Quote:Anyone else noticed how Bob Aintworthit keeps spouting on about "efficiency measures" rather than savings!! :ugh:

It's not an iceberg, it's a frozen water opportunity........yet again

Chugalug2

28th Oct 2009, 22:58

davejb:
Chug,
I think H-C is talking (really) about an ideal - his description works really well IF you can accept the idea that a subsidiary organisation within a larger whole can be truly independent (ie the boss says what he and his minions think, not what they know their boss wants them to think), therefore you gain the advantages of your truly independent MAA whilst retaining the huge amount of real life operational experience that is still present in the RAF/MoD (although ever more diluted). Integrity is the word, unfortunately it is sometimes seen as being bloody minded and dismissed. On the other hand, sometimes it IS bloody mindedness of course...

Well, do you think it can be truly independent? Integrity is truly the word. What integrity can we expect from the MOD? Remember this is the Airworthiness Authority that rigged the CAR of the Chinook Mk2 so that it could enter service with the RAF on a restricted RTS. The whole procedure was in contravention of its own regulations. The gamble did not pay off. 29 people died on the Mull of Kintyre. The RAF conducted the BoI so that the MOD's complicity, in company with its own, was not revealed. Instead the reputations of two deceased junior officers were destroyed by two Air Marshals. Integrity? You must be joking. This report is indeed ground breaking, but it is not MOD breaking. Like Jacko I am uncomfortable with the lynch-mob atmosphere that is already emerging. Some or all of those named may be truly responsible for serious failings or worse, but I am certain that many many others were who remain unscathed. The real problem is the MOD, endex. Leaving it in charge of Airworthiness is like leaving the keys of the drinks cabinet with an alcoholic. Of course a separate MAA would be enormously difficult to establish and staff, but at least it would be independent and have one pre-occupation, the airworthiness of the military air-fleet. I think Mr H-C's MAA will have many as it wrestles with the same dilemma as its predecessors, just how can it succeed faced within the reality of the Defence Budget? As ever the Treasury's fingerprints are all over this in my view. Sorry Mr H-C, but I see no happy ending here.

Vertico

28th Oct 2009, 23:10

Quote:
The answer is simple - if you want us to fight then fund us properly. If you don't want to fund us because of other budgetry pressures then don't ask us to fight.

Very well said! This is the crux of Nimrod, Chinook and too many other disasters.

insty66

28th Oct 2009, 23:27

Rigga

28th Oct 2009, 23:51

"In my judgment, BAE Systems is a company in denial. Denial has been the hallmark of BAE Systems’ response..."

How this quote came immediately to mind when I heard the official BAE response to the report on "Tonight"....The complete denial of any wrong-doing - like any car crash participant!

I have no doubt they will eventually be convinced of the evidence's existance.

backseatjock

29th Oct 2009, 00:32

Agree with your comment Jacko and can't help but remember the result of the David Kelly affair. Tragic as this accident was, it can't be right to pull out 10 names, as this report does, when the problem would appear to be a systemic failure across a number of areas and involving many more people than the 10 who have been named, from the very top of the MoD tree down.

This was a tragic accident and the loss of life was clearly avoidable, My thoughts go to the families and friends of all those who died in XV230 - may those brave flyers rest in peace.

But, no matter how bitter I might feel about the accident itself, I can't help but spare a thought for those named in the report today and the mental torment that they and their families must now be facing. They are human beings and fallible like the rest of us - the pressure must be unbearable and I hope they can find the strength to deal with it.

Aunty

29th Oct 2009, 00:43

Tankertrashnav - the youngster responsible for 'damming' has been sent on a forcible re-education course in the outer reaches of spelling Siberia. Apologies. However, getting the various graphics departments to learn the difference between the R1, MR2 and MRA4 is proving an altogether greater challenge.

vernon99

29th Oct 2009, 00:51

Tragic as this accident was, it can't be right to pull out 10 names, as this report does, when the problem would appear to be a systemic failure across a number of areas and involving many more people than the 10 who have been named, from the very top of the MoD tree down.

Perhaps if those people had thought more about the implications of the job they were doing rather than their careers, we wouldn't have this report.

Sorry but if they didn't have the spine to say no, they should have resigned.

I can't help but spare a thought for those named in the report today and the mental torment that they and their families must now be facing. They are human beings and fallible like the rest of us - the pressure must be unbearable and I hope they can find the strength to deal with it.

Indeed it is tragic, think how the families of the deceased must feel.

Although it is too late to prevent this tragic event, it is not too late to prevent future ones. Those involved today should question their responsibilities and do the right thing, if the government is not prepared to support the findings in a properly funded way, perhaps the current post holders will reconsider their position. I know I would rather resign than face the possibility of being named in the next report.

Papa Whisky Alpha

29th Oct 2009, 00:52

I have not seen any of the television coverage of todays report, however as a family member who sat through the inquest and who has spent today being briefed on the findings by Haddon-Cave and his colleagues on his reportI would like to make one or two observations.

1. Regarding the impartiality of a MAA which is part of MoD, Haddon-Caves proposals are that their activities should be subject to independant scrutiny, such as the CAA and / or the HSE.

2. Air Commodore Baber, at the inquest, admitted responsibility and stated that the buck stopped with him. A lone voice in the wilderness.

3. The way that the report was viewed by the relatives of the crew of XV230 was evidenced by the spontaneous applause for Charles Haddon-Cave when he returned to his Chambers after the media briefing.

4. The Minister gave a very unconvincing performance when faced by the families today which resulted in some walking out of the meeting.

5. I think this report should should be compulsory reading for anyone who aspires to a position of, or career in safety management.

Whatever is said will not turn back the clock, nor will it bring back the crew of XV230, but if it prevents a similar occurence in the future it will have served its purpose. My wife and I have many friends on the Nimrod fleet and we hope that the implementation of this report may go some way toward keeping them safe.

Seldomfitforpurpose

29th Oct 2009, 02:08

I fear that all this report will do is to have countless senior officers crossing every finger and toe they have in the hope that the money saving career decisions they have made do not come back to haunt them :(

Jackonicko

29th Oct 2009, 02:10

If anyone knows where George Baber is, PM me, please.

This journo would like to write him a letter expressing support and sympathy.

The people who should be hung out to dry are the policy makers, and not those who carried out what flowed inevitably from those policies.

backseatjock

29th Oct 2009, 05:33

Vernon, you said: "think how the families of the deceased must feel."

Tried to make it clear that I feel deeply for each and every one of them. Apols to all if this did not come across as such. That said, I do also agree with the comments expressed by Jacko. It was a systemic failure which led to this tragedy.

tucumseh

29th Oct 2009, 07:11

The people who should be hung out to dry are the policy makers, and not those who carried out what flowed inevitably from those policies. I didn’t want to comment; after all, the report is essentially a compilation of Pprune comments from this and other threads. That is, not one word is a revelation.

One thing is clear; the criticism levelled at these individuals is justified to a greater or lesser extent.

But, today, there will be many confused people in MoD. They will read the 5 names of their colleagues and think “But we’re instructed to do far worse on a daily basis – in fact, it’s the only way to advancement”. Ministers, the Chief of Defence Procurement and his (PE/DPA) Director General responsible for Nimrod are all on record supporting disciplinary action against staff that refused to act this way. Not one of these people is referred to directly, although there is a barely concealed swipe at CDP, which makes me think Mr Haddon-Cave wanted to criticise more people but was reigned in.

I’ll take one example from the ten, as he’s the only one I’ve ever spoken to. General Cowan. He is castigated for the way he introduced a 20% “saving” in 1999. What Mr Haddon-Cave says is, strictly speaking, correct.

But, General Cowan will be feeling aggrieved this morning. He’ll be thinking “Why is the report baselined at 1999? Why not mention the Halifax Savings of 1987 – 33% off aircraft support at a single stroke?" When AMSO was formed in the early 90s the crucial area charged with maintaining airworthiness / safety took 3 successive cuts of 27%. This may seem a long time ago, but in the context of Nimrod, Chinook, Hercules and others it is precisely when decisions were being made that had a direct effect on the accidents.

I agree with Jacko. The depth and breadth of the report are ground breaking, but there are many in MoD, Ministers, Senior Officers and Civilians, past and present, who will be breathing a sigh of relief that they belong to the protected species. I know one man who’ll be thinking “Perhaps I shouldn’t have waived that Critical Design Review and disciplined my staff for wanting to implement airworthiness regs – hope they don’t re-open the inquest”.

This is infinitely worse than anything in the report. Why do I say that? Because, despite all the justified criticism therein, the indications are that the named individuals were trying to do a good job, but incompetence, circumstances and directives prevented it. But in the cases I mention, having been confronted directly and been told airworthiness was being compromised, these others made quite deliberate decisions to leave aircraft or equipment unsafe.

nigegilb

29th Oct 2009, 07:42

Tuc, I have to say, I AM surprised by the contents of the report. It was described to me last night, (by someone at the press conference) as the nuclear option, Haddon-Cave delivered the goods.

That this report was broad and deep might well have a little something to do with concerned individuals who spent a great deal of time bringing their own experience and knowledge to the table. I won't name them here, but I hope you are satisfied with the end result and I am sure many servicemen will have cause to thank you and H-C for what will lead to a re-evaluation of the implementation of airworthiness regulations in UK Military.

I for one am content that individuals have been named. For far too many years the MoD has been a faceless organisation. Time for people to face up to their responsibilities. If they don't like it, tough, get another job.
People lower down the food chain can now feel empowered to ignore pressures from above if safety is being compromised.

These 10 people named in the report are still alive, which is more than can be said for the 14 who perished in the Afghan skies.

TUC, you were an inspiration to me during the Herc Inquest. I hope you are sleeping easier tonight.

TD, you have played a quite extraodinary role in all of this, it has been an honour to have gotten to know you and I hope you and the other families affected by this tragedy, can feel that things really will change for the better now.

A ground breaking day in many senses of the word.

kokpit

29th Oct 2009, 08:11

It's not just the disasters that have occurred. Sadly, I believe there are still "accidents" waiting to happen for all the reasons given in the report.

There is no quick fix for years of underfunding and the budget first mentality.

It is a very sobering read especially if you currently have a job with delegated airworthiness responsibilities!

Never a truer word! I am so glad I managed to find another job and leave the IPT I was on, and the 26 years of aeronatical experience and training behind. If you voiced your concerns you were branded a moaner or trouble maker, others however seemed far more able to sleep easy with the financially driven decisions that were common place.

Unfiortunately IPTs as a whole seem to get tarred with a very big brush, but there are many within doing their utmost to do the right thing, sometimes the system is just too powerful that common sense (also read airworthiness) struggles to break through. :ugh:

Winco

29th Oct 2009, 08:22

Jacko

Whilst I applaud your sentiments for the likes of George Baber and those others named, the fact remains that they are responsible, albeit to a greater or lesser extent and I think it was right that they were named.

I have little doubt that these 10 very experienced people all knew what they were doing, and frankly, if they were not happy with things, or uncertain then they should have said so at the time and if necessary resigned.

I think you are asking a bit much now to offer sympathy to them. Yes, it might be a difficult time for them, but it isn't anywhere near as difficult as it is for the families and friends of those lost unneccessarily.

I for one have little if any sympathy for any of them.

Winco

Rigger1

29th Oct 2009, 09:05

Yes, it might be a difficult time for them, but it isn't anywhere near as difficult as it is for the families and friends of those lost unnecessarily.

Winco, I do not disagree, out thoughts should be with the families and friends left behind because of this wholly avoidable catastrophe. However, at least George Baber has had the decency to stand up and admit that he will shoulder the blame as it happened on his watch, as such in my view he has shown honour and done the right thing, and although we shouldn’t congratulate him for it let's at least recognise what he has done. It’s a shame that a great many Politicians and bureaucrats will never have the spine to do the same thing, and therefore should not be in the positions they are now.

green granite

29th Oct 2009, 09:10

Perhaps, now that the MOD, BAE and QuinetiQ face huge costs for compensation and legal fees, to say nothing of the cost of an airframe, the bean counters will realise that cutting costs because they can is not necessarily the cheapest option. But don't hold your breath.
My main concern now, is that in future, everyone will spend so much time covering their backsides that either nothing will ever get done, or it will run so late that the cost overruns will be huge.

danieloakworth

29th Oct 2009, 09:47

Two years ago George Baber initiated a root and branch study into how MOD conduct safety assurance work. Why did MOD see fit to contract the work to QinetiQ. It makes my blood boil that one of the outfits that were culpable for the deaths of 14 people are making money out of it.

Squirrel 41

29th Oct 2009, 09:52

I'm still reading the report - it's sobering stuff. But looking at the appalling reportage of the "performance" (if that's the right word) of BAES and QQ, I was hoping that they'd take a good long look at themselves.

In case, however, they've not gotten around to this yet, perhaps I could make a suggestion. Instead of public evasiveness (BAES) or apparent silence (QQ), the VERY LEAST that they should do - immediately - is:

(i) Take responsibility and publicly apologise

(ii) Donate the fees that they charged the MOD for the Nimrod Safety Case to a service charity of the choice of the XV230 families. With interest.

Otherwise, 'twould seem to me that they've decided to keep money stained with the blood of innocent men.

S41

Wee Weasley Welshman

29th Oct 2009, 12:14

Nimrod deaths: QinetiQ boss falls on his sword. Who’s next? - Iain Martin - WSJ (http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2009/10/29/nimrod-deaths-qinetiq-boss-falls-on-his-sword-whos-next/)

WWW

Navaleye

29th Oct 2009, 15:23

I read the report in full and was quite disgusted. Any serving officer should be dismissed the service sans pension. The civvies should be fired on the spot according to employment law. When I was at sea, the safety of the ship's flight was the top priority bar none or it didn't fly. I find it incredible that any serving officer would be part of such a regime. Rant over.

Jumping_Jack

29th Oct 2009, 18:02

Regrettably the culture of 'savings' or 'efficiencies' continues. Not just in areas covered by airworthiness issues but accross the board in the name of 'business'. Arbitary cuts in manpower/resources without regard for the task to be completed are happening now, supervision is being pared to the bone...'accidents' are waiting to happen.

WasNaeMe

29th Oct 2009, 19:00

There is a wider issue here…
Whilst the (arguably) nefarious activities of those (persons & organisations) named in this report have led to where we are now, there remains the potential for kindred activities relevant to other platforms, not yet (& please god, not catastrophically…) discovered/revealed.

Or is this whole sorry mess relevant to Nimrod alone?

bird99

29th Oct 2009, 19:01

5. I think this report should should be compulsory reading for anyone who aspires to a position of, or career in safety management.

PWA

Actually I think the report should be compulsory reading for anyone in a position of authority (or, in fact, even if they aren't) in the RAF. Every chapter is incredibly thought-provoking. I'm just sorry it's too big to print and carry around (and costs £63 on the official website!) so I can keep it close by as a reference document on responsibility and accountability.

Finnpog

29th Oct 2009, 19:08

This "Third Way" has been perpetrated across the public sector with both the Police & the NHS in exactly the same pitiful state - where Change has become a state of perpetual motion which allows weak managers & senior officers to demonstrate their 'open mindedness', 'inspirational leadership' and 'creativity' by tinkering and fcuking about with things but NEVER having to live with the outcome of their ideas because they have butterfly flitted to the next posting.

This is a systemic problem in that it also sees only PLU's (People Like Us - as seen from the viewpoint of the senior ranks) ever promoted beyond the middle ranks because 'They' don't want anyone with comparable rank who will challenge their bullsh*t.

We are in posts as servants of the Crown. We supposdly champion the concepts of Integrity, Honour and Courage...

...So why do Tosspots who piddle of these concepts seem to get on so well?

This is also true of the Poli's

SRENNAPS

29th Oct 2009, 19:14

where Change has become a state of perpetual motion which allows weak managers & senior officers to demonstrate their 'open mindedness', 'inspirational leadership' and 'creativity' by tinkering and fcuking about with things but NEVER having to live with the outcome of their ideas because they have butterfly flitted to the next posting.:D:D:D

Well said and that is the main reason I left!!

Tappers Dad

29th Oct 2009, 19:33

I have just arrived home from London, Mr Haddon-Caves report was comprehensive and hard hitting. It has been laid before Parliment and it's content cannot be challenged. I hope that every one of his recommendations are implimented and those named within this report hold their heads in shame .They are jointly responsible for the death of 14 good innocent aviators.

I shall write no more now other to thank all those PPRuners that helped Mr Haddon-Cave in his work, I know who you are and myself and Bens Mum thank you from the bottom of our hearts for standing with us, against the odds.

Wrathmonk

29th Oct 2009, 19:57

TD

I believe that there will be many many hundreds of aircrew, both current and future, who will benefit from your tenacity and determination to get to the truth and helping to highlight the many failings in "the system" - for us/them THANK YOU :D

Da4orce

29th Oct 2009, 20:48

BAE sacked 260 employees for unethical behaviour in 2007/08. (http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/04/14/45387/bae-sacks-260-employees-for-unethical-behaviour.html) What could be more unethical than being found to be complicite in the deaths of 14 servicemen? Yet no word yet from BAE on dismissals of those named by H-C's report.

I had to stop reading their 2007 Corporate Responsibility Report because I began feeling physically sick. But it's here if anyone wants to pick over the back slapping corporate ****e spouted within...
http://www.baesystems.com/BAEProd/groups/public/documents/bae_publication/bae_pdf_cr_crreport2007vii.pdf

Our responsibilities
We are committed to being a responsible
business. This means using our influence
positively to benefit society and the environment,
while minimising any negative impacts.

Page 5 is good...

-Ethics awareness training has
been introduced to new starter
induction processes
- New businesses are issued with the
Company’s ethics guide promptly after
acquisition and this is followed up with
online or DVD training
- A survey was undertaken which indicated
that 99% of UK employees have some
awareness of our ethical standards.
Action plans to address areas identified
for improvement have been put in place.

Oh and one of the next steps is for ...

Senior Leadership to communicate and
demonstrate commitment to high ethical
standards through employee engagement.
Number of engagement events and
employees reached to be measured

I wonder whether this document has been put on to rolls and distributed to every toilet within BAE systems so that their employees can wipe their cowardly yellow little arses with it. Because from what I can see it's been of :mad: all other use!

Da4orce

29th Oct 2009, 20:58

Oh and this bit, really!!!

Our ethical principles

Accountability: we are personally answerable for our conduct and actions.
Honesty: there is no substitute for the truth.
Integrity: we say what we do, we do what we say.
Openness: when questions are asked, we will be frank and straightforward in our answers.
Respect: we value and treat each individual with dignity and thoughtfulness.

Ivan Rogov

29th Oct 2009, 21:03

Da4orce, I think the structure BAE and their way of conducting business may be more to blame than all their employees. I am sure many of them work very hard to help us and give us what we want but are frustrated by very similar issue in the BAE organisation.

backseatjock

29th Oct 2009, 21:05

Latest development this evening is the following statement from BAE, which is already on some news channels and will likely appear in some of tomorrow's newspapers:

STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO HADDON-CAVE REPORT INTO LOSS OF NIMROD XV230

Farnborough, UK – Following publication of the report into the loss of Nimrod XV230 over Afghanistan, we have now had the opportunity to review the report.

We acknowledge that there were a number of failings in our application of our internal processes and procedures during the course of work undertaken as part of the Nimrod safety review which took place between 2001 and 2004. We accept full responsibility for these failings and apologise unreservedly for them.

The Company remains absolutely committed to safety as a priority and has implemented improvements in the course of the review of this incident. It has learnt from the mistakes made in the 2001 safety review, identified originally in the Board of Inquiry report published in 2007. Those lessons learnt have already been applied and improvements implemented.

The Haddon-Cave Report raises wide ranging issues. We will respond as appropriate. Our priority is to identify areas for further improvements to the management of safety risk.

We deeply regret the loss of life resulting from this accident and our thoughts continue to be with the families and friends of those affected by this tragedy.

backseatjock

29th Oct 2009, 21:15

Weasely, don't be too sure that the QQ CEO fell on his sword over the HC
XV230 report. He was rumoured to be on his way, for reasons other than this, months back.

Rigga

29th Oct 2009, 21:39

This report has urged me to review the areas mentioned in the report my area of concern - I work in airworthiness and quality and I am custodian of the SMS.

It's easy for me to do this - but should others wait to be told what to do? Or take the initiative and start looking?

As the report intimates - discussion is required, but not more than action.

Chugalug2

29th Oct 2009, 21:46

Tappers Dad:

I shall write no more now other to thank all those PPRuners that helped Mr Haddon-Cave in his work, I know who you are and myself and Bens Mum thank you from the bottom of our hearts for standing with us, against the odds.

As Wrathmonk has already stated far more eloquently than I can it is we aviators, past and present, who must thank you two. Despite your grief you have fought, sometimes against some hostile reception on this very thread, to have something positive emerge from your terrible loss. By never being deflected from your demand to know what happened, and crucially why, you started uncovering something unprecedented. For we now know that the neglect and incompetence that led to the loss of XV230 and all on board was systemic and infected every other aircraft in the UK Military Fleet to some extent or another. Mr Charles Haddon-Cave QC rightly dedicates his Review to your son and the 13 other victims of that Gross Negligence, as well as their families and loved ones. That Review will be a historic memorial to Ben and his colleagues for I am certain that it will mean many lives saved that might otherwise perish in other avoidable accidents. Perhaps I have been less than fulsome in my tribute elsewhere to this Review because I consider that the chance of an MAA completely free of the MOD would have been the best solution. In my disappointment I should perhaps have made it clear that nonetheless this is still a monumental change of direction in UK Military Airworthiness Regulation and one that will hopefully yet fulfill all that we wish of it. That we can have such a hope is very much due to your tenacity and drive TD. Respect Sir, and please do not go away too far or for too long. We need your occasional dig in the ribs!

tucumseh

29th Oct 2009, 22:02

WasNaeMe

Or is this whole sorry mess relevant to Nimrod alone?
No.

The failures are widespread and, as I said earlier, many in MoD will realise they do far worse on a daily basis.

The basic reason is because the airworthiness regulations and procedures (and the hated processes) are common to all. At a lower level, aircraft share common equipment and are "supported" by the same contractors.

But, as H-C so rightly says, the biggest problem is at the top - those whose ethos has allowed, nay ENCOURAGED this to happen, despite many verbal and written warnings of what was looming.

When I say "top" I mean Ministers as well. Ainsworth has come out with the usual "We're already doing something". But the record shows Adam Ingram was warned, in writing, long before XV230 crashed, that airworthiness regulations were not being implemented properly (the precise wording of ACM Loader in the BoI report, which led directly to the H-C Review). Also on record is his letter denying this, stating categorically that he was satisfied they WERE implemented properly.

Some months later, XV230 was lost.

I want to know what action is being taken against the people who prepared that reply, knowingly lying to a Minister and prompting him to mislead an MP. Their actions are arguably worse than those named by H-C. It is notable that the supporting evidence supplied at the time is precisely that cited by H-C (financial cutbacks compromising safety). MoD originally denied the existance of such evidence, but thankfully H-C was able to have direct access and expose the lie.

Boozydragon

29th Oct 2009, 22:11

Having served at the IPT during this period :ugh:I am pleasantly surprised that George Baber has been named and shamed. As OC ESW at Leuchars and as IPTL his management style was one of 'make it so' with little true leadership for his troops. He was self-promoting and was only interested in his first (and last!) star. If the circumstances were not so tragic (I knew 3 of the mates in XV230) I would smile at those chickens coming home to roost! Frank Walsh on the other hand has been hung out to dry and I don't blame him for not wanting to stick his head over the trench to have it shot off by George Baber :ouch:.

Thierry130

29th Oct 2009, 22:19

Agree Boozy. He may have come clean at the Inquest - and credit I suppose for that - but only after he had taken up the comforts of a 1* billet. It is simply untenable IMHO for someone proven to be so negligent by H-C to emerge with any respect at all. Let us see what happens next, and how he seeks to "defend" himself.

Derek Booth

29th Oct 2009, 22:25

TD. Respect Sir, and please do not go away too far or for too long. We need your occasional dig in the ribs!

Well said.

The Poison Dwarf

29th Oct 2009, 22:51

The full report is available to download, for free, as a PDF, at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_10_09_nimrod.pdf

It is very sad that it has taken a tragedy of this magnitude to highlight the culture of "down to a price, not up to a standard", but then it always was going to take something like this.

TPD

green granite

30th Oct 2009, 08:21

I want to know what action is being taken against the people who prepared that reply, knowingly lying to a Minister and prompting him to mislead an MP.

How do you know for certain that it wasn't the minister himself who twisted and spun things, bit like the WMD saga which B-Liar manipulated to suit his own ends.

Seldomfitforpurpose

30th Oct 2009, 09:34

How do you know for certain that it wasn't the minister himself who twisted and spun things, bit like the WMD saga which B-Liar manipulated to suit his own ends.

GG,

With my devils advocate hat on if what you suggest happened, and it may well have then why did those who knew the true facts not speak up :confused:

There are people involved in this sad story, from top to bottom, who should be holding their heads in their hands for their inactivity :(

Jabba_TG12

30th Oct 2009, 09:37

Hear, Hear Finn. Well said. :D:D:D

green granite

30th Oct 2009, 09:41

With my devils advocate hat on if what you suggest happened, and it may well have then why did those who knew the true facts not speak up

Being cynical, Career/pensions etc ( I too was being a bit DA in my earlier comment )

stbd beam

30th Oct 2009, 09:45

'I believe that there will be many many hundreds of aircrew, both current and future, who will benefit from your tenacity and determination to get to the truth and helping to highlight the many failings in "the system" - for us/them THANK YOU'

Hear hear, Thank-you Graham

SB

Cows getting bigger

30th Oct 2009, 10:27

Well, that is one of the most fascinating official documents I have ever read. H-C has demonstrated how a whole government department is organisationally impotent and unfit for purpose. For over a decade it has chosen to react to numerous financial cuts in a haphazard and shallow fashion. It has highlighted far far more than Nimrod airworthiness; the whole MoD ethos has been questioned. This report should be rocking the very heart of the MoD and Government.

flipster

30th Oct 2009, 10:31

CGB

I should say so....

"The most devastating criticism of Government and the MoD in living memory."

(BBC Radio 4)

Well done Mr Haddon-Cave!

Nimbus265

30th Oct 2009, 10:46

Annex A to JSP 815 states (in the first line):

1. As Secretary of State I am responsible for all safety, environmental and sustainable development matters within Defence.

While I agree with the H-C report in its entirety, this particular element points firmly at the Government. Heads of other organisations for which there have been failings have done the honourable thing and resigned, taking full responsibility for organisation failings. This statement however is beyond complict in this post. Should the current or former SoS equally be called to account???

helgar33

30th Oct 2009, 11:01

Hard to spare a thought for the 10 named and shamed individuals families when I no longer have my husband for support and our daughter has lost the love and support of her father for her future and indeed all 14 families no longer have their loved ones.
I can't help feeling that if the 10 named and shamed had done their jobs properly they wouldn't be in this mess. Our guys acted with 'calmness, bravery and professionalism' and their fate was 'sealed from the first fire warning'.
Our pride is immense our grief immeasurable.
Helen

PPRuNeUser0139

30th Oct 2009, 11:38

I'd like to congratulate Mr Haddon-Cave for a superbly comprehensive piece of work.. incisively written in plain English with great clarity, free of management-speak gobbledygook, such that anyone can read it. Well done, sir.

I think this report and its findings will echo long in the corridors. As an epitaph to the crew of XV230, they could not ask for better.

andyy

30th Oct 2009, 12:43

glad rag

30th Oct 2009, 12:59

As OC ESW at Leuchars and as IPTL his management style was one of 'make it so' with little true leadership for his troops. He was self-promoting and was only interested in his first (and last!) star .

Favourite word "synergie" or lack of.

Winco

30th Oct 2009, 13:00

helgar33

We cannot even begin to comprehend the feelings you and the other family members have experienced and continue to live with.

The only people who have come out of this absolute tragedy is the crew of XV230, and you and everyone else can be rightly immensly proud of them all.

The report is shocking, by any standard. It shows that the RAF, MOD and everyone else in this sorry chain was just not up to the job and failed miserably. The people at the top (including those at the very top) knew of the problems and basically sat back and did nothing. Not only those in the RAF but in government and industry aswell.

I am truly saddened at what I read in the report. It shows just what a pathetic bunch of individuals were responsible, and I hope that I never have the displeasure of meeting any of them again. Shame on them all. I have no sympathy for them to be named, and I hope that future generations of pilots and aircrew alike read the report, remember the names and their failings and learn from it.

TD

You and I have corresponded on several occasions and I have been in awe of your courage and tenacity throughout these long, painful past few years. But you have succeeded Sir! It is very much down to you raising the profile of this incident that we have arrived at where we are today, and I applaud you Graham, sincerely. I would even go so far as to suggest that the RAF is a safer place today than it was a few years ago.

As others have said; please don't go too far away, we need people like yourself to maintain the standards you have set.

To all the families of XV230, those of us who have anything to do with Nimrod, will never forget your loved ones, because they were loved by us aswell.

RIP guys, you are all still very much in our thoughts

Winco

Tappers Dad

30th Oct 2009, 14:00

Thank you for your kind words it means a lot,as I said to a reporter on Wednesday when asked what kept me going I said most Dads would walk over broken glass and more for their children I am still his dad.
Sorry guys but when I said "I shall write no more now " I meant last night !!!!!
I am going no where until Ainsworth ,Rammell,Brown et al have implimented the recommendations in this report.

As a way of an update the CEO of Quintiq resigned yesterday although the company says it was not connected to the HC review (Yea right).

BAE sys have said today:

We acknowledge that there were a number of failings in our application of our internal processes and procedures during the course of work undertaken as part of the Nimrod safety review which took place between 2001 and 2004. We accept full responsibility for these failings and apologise unreservedly for them.

The Company remains absolutely committed to safety as a priority and has implemented improvements in the course of the review of this incident. It has learnt from the mistakes made in the 2001 safety review, identified originally in the Board of Inquiry report published in 2007. Those lessons learnt have already been applied and improvements implemented.

The Haddon-Cave Report raises wide ranging issues. We will respond as appropriate. Our priority is to identify areas for further improvements to the management of safety risk.

We deeply regret the loss of life resulting from this accident and our thoughts continue to be with the families and friends of those affected by this tragedy.

I expected no less.

We received a letter from No 2 Group today stating:

You may be particularly concerned to know what action will be taken against those who have been criticised in the report. The individuals still serving in the RAF are no longer employed in roles with any connection to airworthiness or safety (Well amen to that) We will now consider what further action should be taken in relation to these officers in the light of the evidence uncovered by the report. (Amen again)

As for legal action I am :mad:

Winco

30th Oct 2009, 14:04

Many thnks for the update Graham, and I'm delighted you're still going to be around. Respect.
Very best wishes
Winco

John Farley

30th Oct 2009, 14:29

An issue that I don't think has been raised is properly using the expertise of the men and women on the hangar floor who prepare aircraft for flight.

In my experience these people can often see airworthiness weaknesses in a design or mod but expressing their views upwards in a meaningful way is not easy whether they are in the services or in industry.

I hope that the Foremen, Chiefies and JEngos of this world will in future find it much easier to pass such wisdom upwards. Indeed I would hope that at unit level management sets up procedures to actively encourage such inputs.

Tappers Dad

30th Oct 2009, 15:12

jOHN fARLEY
MR HADDON-CAVES REPORT page 570:

5. In my view, there are five elements required for building an Engaged Organisation and SafetyCulture:
A Reporting Culture: an organisational climate where people readily report problems, errors and near misses.

A Just Culture: an atmosphere of trust where people are encouraged and even rewarded for providing safety-related information; and it is clear to everyone what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

A Flexible Culture: a culture that can adapt to changing circumstances and demands while maintaining its focus on safety.

A Learning Culture: the willingness and competence to draw the right conclusions from its safety information and the will to implement major safety reforms.
A Questioning Culture:1 It is vital to ask “What if?” and “Why?” questions. Questions are the antidote to assumptions, which so often incubate mistakes.

6. The role of Leadership is critical in Safety Culture.

7. I make appropriate Recommendations with a view to building an Engaged Organisation and Safety Culture for the Future.

I hope you can see he has covered this but it has to be implimented .

insty66

30th Oct 2009, 16:11

Hopefully the report will be compulsory reading for everyone on Staff Course, Command Course or the equivelant. The lessons identified can almost certainly read across to other aspects of the Military, not just those in aviation.

One of the most shameful things is the fact that most of the lessons identified were not new, you only have to see the comparisons made in the report to see that.

Evalu8ter

30th Oct 2009, 16:19

Perhaps we should view this excellent report as the opportunity for the MoD to draw a line under the "leadership" principles of the past few years, and to dismantle the ethos of "advancement via savings/efficiencies/budget cuts whilst increasing output, smiling, and saying that everything is fine".

Now, more than ever, we need officers at the top of the military with moral courage and plainspeaking agendas. We need a new generation of leaders that are genuinely experienced (and professionally qualified) to hold senior posts in the acquisition/airworthiness fields. We need to inculcate and nurture a proper acquisition stream, where those with competance can continue to exploit their knowledge whilst having fulfilling and full careers. We cannot afford the "revolving door" policy (which, ironically, I believe is one reason why IPTs were first established) as it just encourages the "hope it won't happen on my watch" attitude as career-hungry individuals dip in and out of the ECC/DE&S as quickly as possible.

What will this take? A fundmental shift in the tenets of career management policy by manning, the generation of a new specialisation and, yes, more money as so many projects are currently compromised by gapped posts and the dreaded manpower control totals. It will take an admission that things have been done wrong in the past.

I'm all too aware though that the rule of "like promotes like" is in force here, and thus am pessimistic that, this close to an election, anything more than some window-dressing and deckchair re-arranging will actually happen.

andyy

30th Oct 2009, 16:52

In my recent past life I have helped "bid" support service projects in to the MoD and several times, when bidding for contractors to take over MoD functions, we were asked to explain "who goes to jail" if it all goes wrong, contractor or IPTL? ie who has ultimate responsibility. This expression came from Civil Service concern following the Hatfield rail disaster when the subsequent enquiry could not find anyone to blame. Responsibility for the outcomes that occurred could not be laid at any one person or one organisations door. One of the outcomes of that enquiry was that management & contract structures were supposed to be put in place so that it is clear where the responsibility lies. Plainly that has not been achieved yet but the "Hatfield question" was certainly one that exercised minds within many parts of the wider Civil Service in all sorts of contexts. (sadly perhaps not in this bit of the MoD). Perhaps the "Hatfield question" & now the "Nimrod question" are legacies that will hopefully now be imprinted on every ones mind when they take decisons affecting the lives of others.

John Farley

30th Oct 2009, 16:58

shona beattie

30th Oct 2009, 16:59

Helen I agree with your statement fully, if people are not identified in such a wide, well researched nimrod review like this then, the attitude and lack of accountability will prevail, and this culture that has got to change. However we shall have to wait to see if it is implemented and how long it will take.

We can only hope that the review is fully implemented and my husband Steve and the other 13 members of the crew have not died in vain, but have enabled a safety platform to be produced, to make the armed forces safer.

footster

30th Oct 2009, 17:45

As a civilian who has been reading these posts with interest i'd like to take this opportunity to say to Tappers Dad sir you are a credit to your son and the other crewmembers who lost their lives for your patience and determination in pursueing this against the powers that be.
To all those who lost their lives in XV230 RIP.

tucumseh

30th Oct 2009, 17:48

Tappers Dad

Sure the points are covered in the top level down sense (H-C's role) but that is not quite the same thing as positively enabling (yea encouraging) the wisdom of the people at the bottom of the organisation to be accepted upwards.

I have had a convenor say to me "that is not the fitters job and if they do that they will be victimised by the hangar boss who just wants the thing out of the door"

The real world....

JF

John

If I may expand on what Graham has said.

You are correct about the top-down approach. Be assured the precise detail of what you are talking about was conveyed to Mr Haddon-Cave.

Feedback is a mandated obligation of the MoD Safety Management System, without which the Safety Case cannot be said to be robust.

Evidence was provided that senior MoD staffs (2 and 4 Stars) had encouraged an ethos whereby such feedback was frowned upon and openly denigrated. Related to this, evidence was also provided that the formal routes, for example Narrative Fault Reports or Unsatisfactory Feature Reports, had funding withdrawn over a period of years, culminating in an instruction that not even safety tasks were to be undertaken. (The example cited to Mr H-C was smoke in cockpits, causing heavy landings and injuries, with funding to investigate and correct refused by the budget holder, a supplier).

Successive Ministers supported these actions, in writing (although I accept they simply sign what is put in front of them, but Mr H-C rightly condemns this practice).

So, one weakness of the report is that such detail is not included; rather a top level statement is made that regulations have not been followed and funding cut, rather assuming MoD retains the corporate knowledge (a mandated airworthiness component) to understand all the detailed implications. They do not, at least not on the scale to implement this report.

It is almost as if a huge Appendix is missing which fleshes out this detail. I can foresee MoD desperately employing a raft of consultants to work out WTF Mr H-C means! Of course, this may be a deliberate ploy to prove his report accurate!

davejb

30th Oct 2009, 17:52

Graham,
Well done. You richly deserve that, as all on here (I believe) agree. If you can't find any other reason to stay on, then start posting entries to the caption competition, you are a welcome mess guest any time you feel like dropping in.

Well done also to those other family members who have joined in demanding this review be conducted, and also for 'simply' getting on with life and holding it all together over the last few years. I am positive that this view is shared by everyone on here. I wish you the very best for the future.

I hope all family members take some comfort from this report, which really does, in my view, drag the RAF (and MoD) into the 20th (maybe even the 21st) century after what has been a 19th century approach to date. There is still a feeling prevalent in society that when servicemen lose their lives 'that is what they are paid for' but I hope this report goes some way to changing that stupid attitude.

If the redoubtable Haddon - Cave reads this, then I'll buy you any number of drinks all night long any time you like*, it was a triumph. You have every right to be extremely proud of your efforts.

Dave

* All drinks to be consumed in the Beastie, Mosset, Ramnee or - in extremis - LaichMoray... I have to get to work in the morning.

Exrigger

30th Oct 2009, 18:08

A Reporting Culture: an organisational climate where people readily report problems, errors and near misses. We do have this, but what is needed is the will of management to actually do something.

A Just Culture: an atmosphere of trust where people are encouraged and even rewarded for providing safety-related information; and it is clear to everyone what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. We have this, but management, but rewards are virtually non-existant and the acceptable/unacceptable behaviour is only made clear when things go wrong.

A Flexible Culture: a culture that can adapt to changing circumstances and demands while maintaining its focus on safety. We have this, but the management have not the will, money, empowerment to allow the changes to happen.

A Learning Culture: the willingness and competence to draw the right conclusions from its safety information and the will to implement major safety reforms. Well now we get down to the crux of the matter, as can probably be seen from my responses above.

A Questioning Culture: It is vital to ask “What if?” and “Why?” questions. Questions are the antidote to assumptions, which so often incubate mistakes. We do this, but the management don't answer or do anything about as it will cost in money, schedule, risk of non advancement or in some cases just cause work they do not want or can cope with.

Now the 'we' is most people on the 'shop floor' of most work places, the paragraphs TD quoted from the report are included in most companies code of conduct/ethics policy, but as above the only people who are the ones expected to comply to these policies are the guys on the shop floor and they are hamstrung by all the things that have been highlighted in the report/above and elsewhere in this thread.

The problem is endemic throughout the industry and it is going to to take a lot off money, willpower and commitment from those at the top to sort this out for the future, but with self serving government officials and management it is not going to happen anytime soon in my opinion.

Da4orce

30th Oct 2009, 18:09

andyy / shona - agree totally, accountability is the key.

If I worked in a faceless organisation where there had historically been no accountability then what is the disincentive for me not to think 'oh well if I screw up it doesn't matter'.

This report has changed that, no more hiding in the shadows, you screw up and you will be exposed.

Accountability, it's a wonderful thing for focussing the mind!

As for the 10 named, well it should have been at least 13 (Blair, Brown(G), Ainsworth), if not more. I have not one ounce of sympathy for them, they had the chance to do the right thing, they failed.

I hope they now get as little sleep as I do thinking of my little brother being blown out of the sky over a hostile country in a plane that I wouldn't send my worst enemy up in!

R.I.P Tapper

John Farley

30th Oct 2009, 18:39

tucumseh

Thanks.

We oiled the wheels where I worked by calling the feedback upwards a "Suggestion Scheme" and handing out small amounts of money for good suggestions.

However for obvious reasons military organisations are not normally geared to having unsolicited comments going up the rank structure. Technical based comments clearly must be an exception and indeed (in my view) should be seen by senior people as welcome advice aimed aimed at saving them from receiving top down criticism following accidents.

John

tucumseh

30th Oct 2009, 19:30

John

Yes, the MoD suggestions schemes. MIDAS and then GEMS.

A feature of them was that suggestions to change policy were not allowed.

As it was stated and fully implemented policy to reduce airworthiness funding and knowingly compromise safety (a small part of which was the 20% “savings” General Cowan was slated for introducing), any suggestions to rescind were not even acknowledged. I submitted one such suggestion in 2001 (still got it), citing various audit reports which, if you read them, would remind you of the Haddon-Cave report. No reply. I later spoke directly to the 3 Star. Turned his back on me.

His failure to act was far worse than those named in the report, as he was in a position to change this policy. Those named were not.

SirToppamHat

30th Oct 2009, 20:01

I've no direct experience of MIDAS, but have benefited personally from GEMS. ISTR one of the difficulties with it was assessing the magnitude of the award, and working out whether the suggestion was part of someone's core role (which effectively made the individual ineligible). GEMS awards were most likely to be made where any work had been done in one's own time, the idea could be proved not to be part of someone's job and easy to assess in terms of benefit.

Thus if a medic came up with an idea to link the switching on of airfield lighting to when the light levels fell to a certain level, and she had done some work (in her own time) to research equipment that could automate the process, and that this would save £10,000 per year, she might well get £2,000 and a nice letter from the Stn Cdr for her efforts.

On the other hand, a line technician looking at the implementation of a UOR on an ac and wishing to point out that the system was fundamentally dangerous for whatever reason would not qualify for an award. That's not to say that the suggestion wouldn't merit consideration (or even be implemented), but that was not (if memory serves) what GEMS was intended for.

RIP Q.

STH

helgar33

30th Oct 2009, 20:09

Thanks for your words Winco and Shona.
I would also like to add my thanks to all the other people who were acknowledged at the end of the H-C report including Jimmy Jones, Tappers dad and Mike Bell and to all the other family members who, like my father who suggested the tearing down of a nimrod (which was not a MoD initiative as suggested), pushed this report forward. Hopefully things will now, finally, change for the better. That is all that I wanted and means that they didn't die for nothing.
Helen.

nigegilb

30th Oct 2009, 20:16

Tuc,

Go ahead and name him, Baber has already taken complete responsibility for this disaster. Lord only knows why, for he has surely opened himself up to criminal charges for gross negligence manslaughter? I don't see why he should go down alone, this obliteration of safety culture was cynically manipulated by much higher-ups and resulted in a systemic breakdown of safety standards. A morally bankrupt leadership, that only seemed to care about the rise of one's own career. Difficult to see how that culture is going to change overnight, but you can do us all a favour by naming the guy who turned his back on safety because he didn't think he was accountable (and probably still doesn't)..

Lyneham Lad

30th Oct 2009, 20:30

H-C's report was everything everyone on this forum had hoped and prayed for. In the media it has been a one-day wonder. Who will monitor the impact and the implemenation of it's recommendations on the MoD and BWoS etc? How will the necessary sea-change in attitudes be forced through? Will they stick or wither on the vine?

The cynic in me says that should there be (God forbid) a need for a similar inquiry, the Government will be very careful to appoint someone compliant and with very carefully limited terms of reference. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.

enginesuck

30th Oct 2009, 21:20

After finally getting through the report all i can say is i am amazed how thorough and comprehensive it is. I know colleagues who spoke to H-C are well chuffed he took on board their views. Here is to the future, hoping for big changes on the shop floor.

RIP Finally CXX crew 3

themightyimp

30th Oct 2009, 21:26

Firstly, I extended my deepest sympathy and condolences to the family and friends of those who lost their lives.

I am a practising, qualified, safety engineer. I am also in the RAF. I have dealt with several IPTs and projects, both those in service and those in the process of being introduced. I wholeheartedly agree with the findings of the H-C report :D. In my experience, the personnel with day-to-day responsibility within the IPTs are poorly (if at all) trained in functional safety, they are not paid much and some have no interest at all. To be fair there are a few (the honourable minority) who are the opposite.

Let's put this into context. There is a shortage in the UK of Engineers. There is a significant shortage of safety engineers. Every job I applied for (I am leaving) I was offered. Not because I am the bees-knees but because I am qualified and competent. Against this background the salaries being offered are equivalent to SO2/SO1. Paying a civil servant in an IPT at, say, C1 level means that in a highly competitive recruiting environment the MoD is offering less than half the market rate. There is a saying about peanuts.... As I said though I have also met some dilligent, hard working personnel also.

So where am I going with this? I have written safety cases basing them on risks and hazards which the operators presented to me. I then did the behind the scenes safety work to demonstrate (or not) whether the system was acceptably safe. On one major project it was not - this was raised and the response? We'll accept the risk. Fair enough. They get the money (DACOS level) and they take the risk. However, according to the rules & regulations they are not allowed to (in this case) :=. I worked hard (that's what I am paid for); the operators identified the major risk; I documented and presented it; it was ignored. The thing that gets me? A simple procedural change would have solved it with no cash outlay just time and training. Against this I decided to leave. :ugh:

Against all of this there is a "safety-fog". Why on earth we have an explicit name/process for something which used to be called good design, good maintenance, listening to people, heeding what the operators say and then having the money to fix it. Ah, oh well there goes that theory!

Apologies for the long post. Frustration reigns supreme. Hopefully, Charles Ness will undertake the necessary culture change - the one required at the top. More importantly some political leadership would be welcomed. Ainsworth should do the honourable thing and resign. It would cost him nothing, restore his pride, improve the image of a rotten political elite and, hopefully, give an crumb of comfort to those who have lost the most - the families.

Col_onHF

30th Oct 2009, 22:03

I for one, am glad that someone has at last & with authority, shouted out the equivalent of
" The emperor has no clothes on . . ! ! ! ! "

it has taken too long, and sadly taken too many away.

hello1

30th Oct 2009, 22:26

LL,

Have a look at Haddon-Cave's CV - the Govt knew who it was getting to do the Nimrod Review but probably didn't actually understand how bad things were/are. Well there ain't much hiding from the truth now! Excellent report.

I see aspects of the behaviours that H-C identified on a weekly, if not daily basis and if they're honest with you (and themselves) most people in DE&S will admit this. I'm not suggesting that the disgraceful disregard for doing your job properly is prevalent but the culture is crap and needs fixing (oh no more change). Overall, the way that the UK buys military aircraft is a disgrace. The government has been told it several times and has done nothing substantive to change it.

The problem is fundamentally that there is not enough resource - money/people/talent to do what is required. You can spot it in almost every project.

On a separate tack......................the discussion of fuel seals was fascinatingly alarming - anyone else wondering whether safety critical bits of their aircraft have been produced off-spec by a company that had no idea of the intended use?

GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU

31st Oct 2009, 02:37

I’m not a fan of civilian Coroners pontificating on military matters. I do think, though, that yer man Haddon-Cave’s paper doesn’t exactly fall into that category. He still makes the grand statements and the indignant theatricals we expect from QCs but the underlying factual presentation exposes the threadbare structures that support the kit we field operationally.

We spend bloody thousands on “bullying awareness” training, yet we still see it, from Parliament downwards. Certainly Civil Servants who, following Government policy, manage their own careers, will be very keenly aware of their promotion prospects and the cloud of “restoring efficiency” being parked over them. These are, in the main, just ordinary people who don’t have the resilience and disregard for self survival that the likes of a Nelson or many deployed Service types possess. They risk manage their careers somewhat better than they risk manage their work. That is the revelation H-C makes.

Nobody ever expects the cheese holes to line up to become a smoking hole in the ground (or a smoking compartment under the sea) when you're trying to earn a living and retain a career under those circumstances. The Civil Service example is easy but don't we regularly see it in the Military and Industry?

tucumseh

31st Oct 2009, 07:51

themightyimp

Good post

In my experience, the personnel with day-to-day responsibility within the IPTs are poorly (if at all) trained in functional safety,
In 1998 the DPA Director General in charge of, inter alia, Nimrod MRA4 ruled, in writing, that it was sufficient to ensure physical safety, but the contract could be paid off and the (false) statement made stating the aircraft was safe, in the full knowledge it was not functionally safe. This was upheld by the Chief of Defence Procurement. The statement that it was unsafe was made by Boscombe Down but, as we know from Chinook, they are routinely ignored. (Did I mention the same DG was in charge of Chinook? You’d think lessons would be learned).

GBZ

They risk manage their careers somewhat better than they risk manage their work. That is the revelation H-C makes. Not a revelation to those who work with them, I’m afraid. The system, especially now, with 2 year tours for civilians, is such that many cherry pick posts, targeting jobs where the risks have been mitigated or where the work has reverted to managing tasks which you’ve carried out at a lower grade. A typical example would be after full development, when there is an aircraft to convert. A routine task for those aspiring to jobs in procurement (or was).

The net result is DE&S has a hierarchy who have not been tested in the organisation’s primary role – delivering equipment to time, cost and performance. Looking at the staff list at IPTL and above, I’m hard pressed to find any who have initiated and completed a project, and done everything in between. Or who have been head down in an engine bay cursing crap tools and non-existent tech pubs.

I fear it grinds you down, no matter how hard you try. I can trace my deep cynicism, and utter loathing of the Stars I mention, to one day in 2002 when I was asked to present on systems integration to an entire IPT. When I got to the Def Stan that lays down the procedures for maintaining the build standard, which is a mandated pre-requisite for a valid safety case (which is what the H-C report is all about), I was shouted down – almost to a man they had been taught, over many years, that maintaining and being able to demonstrate safety was a “waste of money”. The only man who supported me was, surprise, ex-D/Air Armaments. He knew exactly what I was talking about. One man in a whole IPT, but himself nearing retirement. I now look at that IPTL’s boss and just know things have got worse. In fact, you read the obituaries almost every day.

Distant Voice

31st Oct 2009, 08:36

It is good to see, on page 334, that H-C gives a ruling on "Tolerably safe and not ALARP" --- There is no such thing. This blows apart the Des Browne statement (after being advised by senior officers), made during his BOI announcement in 2007; "QinetiQ has conducted an independent investigation into the fuel system and confirmed that, in light of the measures taken since the crash, the fuel system is safe to operate".

His announcement was based on a QinetiQ report which states in the final paragraph of the Executive Summary; "Having considered the evidence referenced within this safety case report, noting that there are outstanding recommendations and the level of risk present to the fuel system is not ALARP, the operation of the fuel system is tolerably safe given the currently in place"

I believe that this statement, which as I have said is the last item in the Summary, was added for political reasons to keep the Nimrod flying, and came from outside QinetiQ. It is not in keeping with the rest of the report. "Tolerably Safe" is never used in the body, and it is clear from reading the report that QinetiQ understand the ALARP and safety concept. The draft version of this report was circulated in Sept 2007, but all copies have been destroyed. In this instance I believe H-C was wrong to attack QinetIQ on this point; he should have looked higher up the chain.

DV

nigegilb

31st Oct 2009, 09:21

Which is what we stated at the time DV. Pity all the safety experts who agree with H-C now, were so silent at the time.

For "tolerably safe", read "military risk", but we are not man enough to call it that. The words "military risk", had to be squeezed out of Ollis at the Hercules Inquest. Strange, he was very happy and quick to use the option at the time. Typical for what goes as political and military leadership. Let's hope forthcoming court battles over article two, increasingly take this option for doing nothing about safety away from senior officers who never have to expose themselves to excessive risk.

For all those who think this is a one day storm, you might be disappointed. Looking forward to tomorrow's papers....I also suspect the articles may be a little more harder edged than the jack nicko "sympathy" angle.

Jackonicko

31st Oct 2009, 11:28

It's not so much sympathy as disgust that decent, honourable men are being hung out to dry, while those who set their terms of reference, and who shaped the role of the modern IPTL (not least by their treatment of Lang) get away without a word of criticism.

Perhaps Baber and Pledger deserve some criticism - but far harsher criticism is deserved by the successive Governments and Ministers who encouraged the drift towards using IPTs as a simple conduit for funnelling work (and risk) to the Design Authority, and towards reducing the independent role of QinetiQ, and who actively discouraged IPTs from showing any independent thought or initiative.

nigegilb

31st Oct 2009, 11:41

Well I agree with part of your post J-N, that is the responsibility that shoud be being attached to others in this affair. I have received astonishing evidence in the form of a letter to MP/Ingram in 2005 saying exactly what H-C does....

Of course, Ingram did nothing with this information, he simply ignored it. Which is not surprising, it is my opinion that Ingram should answer a charge of malfeasance in public office over the Hercules affair. He repeatedly stated that all Hercs being sent to Afghanistan had a suite of defensive aids which was so far from the truth it was laughable. Ingram misled the public and Parliament on that occasion.

Going back to Baber, his was not a wilful misuse of his responsibilities, he appears to have been less than competent in their application. The mistake Baber made was "admitting" he was responsible for Nimrod airworthiness. Wrong. It is Secretary of State. The regs state he doesn't delegate responsibility, but authority to implement regs. Semantics perhaps, but at a stroke he protected all above him. The implication is that Baber was in charge of his own destiny, which he was not. Bet he regrets that now. If nailed in court, he might well use that defence.

Ingram and I would argue Ollis were much more cynical. In short, if you are going to take extremely high risks with other people's lives, you HAVE to take full responsibility when people are killed. These people have responsibility for oversight, if that oversight is negligent then they MUST face the full force of court action. The people complaining about naming and shaming are usually involved in the system and have enjoyed complete absence of accountability and anonymity in the past. Haddon-Cave has, thankfully, introduced a system of accountability and identification which will eliminate the anonymity and lack of accountability that previous inquests and investigations have allowed.

Ingram's response relating to the Hercules affair, was to deny those levels of risk were being taken in the first place, which leads one to believe that there must have been collusion between Ministers and the MoD. Military officers will be much more aware in the future, that their chances of explaining their actions in court are that much higher, with the associated career damage.

I fully support the naming of these "culpable" people and hopefully it will lead to a cautionary approach to safety instead of the recklessness highlighted by a string of fatal accidents.

Epimetheus

31st Oct 2009, 11:42

Further to Boozydragon at 1634 and glad rag at 1649, it has become increasingly perceived by OC Eng Wgs and ESWs that they must do more than just deliver the eng piece of the unit to be credible in the Stn Cdr's eyes. Despite the privilege of having so many under command, if they haven't been seen to make org changes or cut manpower to deliver financial efficiencies at unit level their paranoia convinces them that they aren't doing enough. Just maintaining the status quo? Forget it. And the WOs and SNCOs are driven to torment by the officers' 2-year posting cycle and reinvention of oh-so-many wheels.

Biggus

31st Oct 2009, 12:26

Regarding the comment from TD...

"We received a letter from No 2 Group today stating:

You may be particularly concerned to know what action will be taken against those who have been criticised in the report. The individuals still serving in the RAF are no longer employed in roles with any connection to airworthiness or safety..."

I can appreciate that they are not currently in jobs "specifically" relating to Flight Safety, so perhaps the statement is correct. However, during my many years in the RAF the Flight Safety mantra drilled into me was that Flight Safety was everyone's responsibility, with accompanying films showing the impact on Flight Safety that cooks, stewards, policeman (the Benny Hill soundtrack as an RAF policeman cycled to the tower to report he had just seen an aircraft taxying past with a panel loose/red flag) etc, can all have. Surely simply by being (very) senior officers in the RAF, they have a responsibility, albeit maybe not directly, towards Flight Safety on an everyday basis.

Maybe I am being unnecessarily "picky" - no doubt someone will put me right shortly!

Satellite_Driver

31st Oct 2009, 14:09

The Haddon-Cave report is as many here have noted a welcome and long overdue examination of the way that airworthiness culture, and indeed engineering culture as a whole, has been undermined in the last decade and a half of relentless change. I mentioned in an earlier comment that as a former Eng Officer (1990-2007) I clearly recognised many of the problems highlighted. I've now had a chance to read the whole report in detail and my views have only been reinforced. Unfortunately, we now have the problem of how we're going to dig ourselves out of this hole.

I joined as a University Cadet in the late 1980s. I spent part of each summer on attachment to the Eng Wg at a MOB, getting practical experience of line and bay engineering work. After IOT, and before engineering training, I did a three-week workshop practical course (where I learned that if I want something welded, I should find someone who knows how to weld!) In those days, EngO training was delivered via the EOT1/EOT2 system, with EOT1 being a six-month course covering all areas of engineering relevant to the RAF irrespective of your degree or whether you were heading into the Aerosystems or Comms-Electronics specialisations of the branch, so despite having graduated in electronics I came out of EOT1 with at least a basic knowledge of aircraft structures, propulsion and flight control systems. The course finished with the three-week 'Hangar Phase' where we worked on a mock squadron of half a dozen Hunters and a Jag, so that - again, irrespective of specialisation - everyone got some exposure to the basics of running an aircraft line. Flight safety management was hammered into all of us - one student I know got a hats-on with the Commandant for doing a quick bodge on a DS-induced fault during a pressured turn-around instead of snagging it. After our first tours we came back for EOT2, which did have separate AS and CE streams but had a common engineering management module which again included flight safety training.

Since then though EOT has been progressively 'refined' and now new EngOs will do either AS or CE versions of EOFT, meaning that about a third of EngO's will not get practical experience or training on aircraft. Whilst I understand the argument about the cost of teaching students material that they may well not directly use in their first couple of tours, it seems essential to me that RAF Engineering officers, who will often end up irrespective of specialisation in jobs involving or connected with air engineering, should have a grounding in the field.

Furthermore, when I entered productive service there was a range of opportunities for EngOs to build their professional competence throughout their careers. It was assumed that after tours at first and second line, third-tour EngOs would usually be put into EA or Role Office posts with the express intent that they would use the knowledge and experienced gained in practical engineering management. Whilst there was even twenty years ago a debate on how essential Chartered Engineer status was (it seemed to depend on whether OC Eng Trg at DSGT was a CEng or not) it was certainly encouraged. For the particularly technically-inclined, there were a fair number of 'starred appointments', involving a year as a (well-paid!) student followed by three years in a specialist post in procurement, industry or (sshh!) DIS. Perhaps most importantly the Eng Branch had specialist support and consultancy organisations such as AMDS and RIU that were specifically established to take on ad-hoc engineering and logistics tasks that required resources and skills not available within a station's Eng Wg.

As the Haddon-Cave report emphasises, the mid-1990s was a high point for airworthiness management and, in broader terms, professional engineering, in the RAF. We had a 3-star Chief Engineer, with a well-defined role and a solid Branch structure underneath him. Things were by no means perfect; in particular, over-establishment of what we'd now call SO2 posts led to a serious glut of sqn ldr posts and as a result both a shortage of competent experienced flt lts (because if you were one then unless you'd been caught with the AOC's daughter you got promoted) and murderous competition to reach wg cdr. Of course, in a culture where engineering management still meant 'managing the actual engineering' the latter may not have been altogether a bad thing.

It didn't last, as H-C notes. His report refers in detail to the whirlwind of change that followed SDR. I left RIU in early 2000, just as it was being assimilated by the Borg (aka DCSA) and the writing was already on the wall - DCSA had to achieve manpower savings, and a large lump of blue-suiters doing jobs that surely could be handled by civilian consultants was an obvious place to start. I spent the next 18 months in a job that took me well out of the mainstream and by the time I put my uniform back on I returned to a very different Eng Branch. Indeed, it soon became clear that rather than being an RAF Engineer I was now a DLO Engineer who happened to have a light-blue uniform. The final six years of my RAF service were spent in SO2 jobs in three different IPTs. These IPTs (for the record, they were Defence Information Infrastructure, Satellite Communications and Logistics Applications) all had their own eccentricities and peculiarities but they all had the following in common to a greater or lesser extent:

- Blithe ignorance of traditional engineering and procurement management practices.
- Obsession with Key Performance Indicators and Change Management.
- An attitude towards uniformed personnel varying from suspicion to outright resentment.
- Fixation on outsourcing not just actual support work but also management and even policy.
- Worst of all, a pervasive intellectual inferiority complex that seemed to assume that only expensive external consultants were capable of having good ideas.

The combination of these factors led to a bizarre situation where we set ourselves up as the 'intelligent customer' of contractors and then promptly outsourced our intelligence to them. It seemed that the ideal IPT approach was to pay a contractor to do a job, then pay him to define the performance indicators for how well that job was being done, then pay him to produce pretty graphs showing that all these PIs were green. The best thing about this approach of course was that it required no actual skill or knowledge as to what the contractor was doing, thus encouraging the sort of 'agile' and 'flexible' career path that got you places in DLO. I well recall a visit from the new IPT leader when I was running the LITS platform upgrade. A submarine designer by profession, he wanted to know why on earth the team running RAF aircraft spares management systems needed so many uniformed RAF personnel? That was typical of the way that the presence of uniformed personnel in IPTs was seen as almost disruptive. We were expensive (an SO2 costs a lot more than the notionally-equivalent civil servant) and were prone to be away for weeks or months at a time on frivolous diversions such as ICSC or detachment to Iraq.

I won't repeat H-C's very accurate observations of the effect all this had on Eng Branch morale and career management. I certainly saw for myself the creeping pressure to conform to a DLO-compatible career path, comprising as many tours of as short a length as reasonably possible (no more than two years, for sure) in a wide range of different areas. Now it's always been true that it's a good idea to get a range of experience, but the progressive de-skilling of managerial jobs in IPTS meant, in my view, that in fact incumbents were just doing very similar jobs - overseeing outsourced contracts - in a disjointed set of environments. As front-line jobs were lost, I saw JOs coming straight out of training into jobs that a decade earlier would only ever have been filled by a third-tourist. (And I know that PMA, as it then was, was unhappy about this - but where else could they post them?) Meanwhile, specialist jobs where expertise could be built were prime candidates for disestablishment, whilst ambitious JOs were warned that such starred appointments as remained might have a bad effect on their career prospects; not only did you risk being labelled a 'specialist', but you would only do one tour in the time competitors for promotion had done two.

The H-C report makes a number of very cogent recommendations aimed at restoring a culture of informed and involved engineering professionalism in the RAF and DLO. To these, I would add a plea to reverse the steady erosion of posts in which junior and mid-level EngOs can develop their engineering expertise. There is certainly nothing wrong with the calibre of people entering the Branch; indeed, the modern IOT and JOCC are arguably far better than the version of my day, whilst the operational tempo means that almost all officers will have extensive deployed forward experience. (Although there is a risk that prolonged deployed ops can lead to bad habits - the H-C report noted the decline in standards of aircraft husbandry over the last decade.) But for these JOs to continue to develop as responsible and competent engineers they need to have the opportunity to gain and use such specialist knowledge without being seen to sidetrack their careers.

Finally, one factor that (unless I missed it) H-C did not mention was the move a few years ago to a common General Duties branch for all officers at wg cdr and above. Whilst I can understand the reasoning behind this there is a risk of creating a mindset that the Eng Branch stops at sqn ldr. This may be administratively true, but you won't see a pilot thinking that he's no longer aircrew just because he's reached wg cdr and gone from the Flying to the GD branch! Assuming that H-C's recommendation to reinstitute a full-time dedicated Chief Engineer is accepted, one of the CE's key duties should be to cultivate a mindset that an Engineer Officer remains, at heart, an engineer no matter how senior or general his or her employment.

Flitzer

31st Oct 2009, 16:05

Is it any wonder one of these balls was dropped? The Wing Commander engineer's repsonsibilities were described in the H-C report;

"a very heavy workload which included:
(1) line management responsibilities for individuals at Chadderton, RAF Kinloss and RAF Wyton;
(2) BLSC and SMP for
the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight;
(3) preparation of a Life Extension paper on the Nimrod;
(4) negotiating
NISC 3 which was intended to produce savings on support contracts;
(5) costs comparisons between the MR2
and MR4;
(6) managing the switch to an ‘equalised’ maintenance policy, which was intended to produce
savings of £8,000,000;
(7) responsibility for aspects of maintenance at RAF Kinloss following the acquisition
of responsibility for Depth by the Nimrod IPT;
(8) dealing with maintenance backlogs due to the extension of
the MR2 out of service date; and
(9) dealing with changes to the operational use of the Nimrod following the
addition of equipment for use in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In addition, his workload was exacerbated by manpower
and resources issues within the IPT, in particular posts being left ‘gapped’."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whilst it is possible to prioritise the above none of these activities are trivial.

How many managers and staff would it take to do all of the above properly?

Tappers Dad

31st Oct 2009, 17:01

Biggus
Are you saying I should trust what I am being told by N0 2 Group ?

Let me think er NO I don't take anything as being true I am told until I am sure it is so.

Rigga

31st Oct 2009, 18:13

TD
Glad to hear you have learned one of the Forces Mantra's - "Dont believe it until your (Home/There/Got it/...)".

... To respond to some other comments:

"There is a shortage in the UK of Engineers."

I believe there has been an increase in the number of jobs available for UK engineers - due mainly to two things:
1. The outsourcing of MOD work has taken a good deal of ex-servicemen (normally a large source of LAE's) to work where they used to work in uniform - and for far less than they could earn, but in an area of their choice.
2. The establishment of new MRO's in the middle-east and far-east has taken a good deal of workers to tax-free salaries.

Someone on this thread (cant find it now) said something like "A lot of people here are openly agreeing with H-C but they didnt say anything previously"

Totally wrong!
In the Forces there has NEVER been an independant and/or trustworthy way of raising serious concerns from the shop floor to the higher echelons. "They" didnt want to know what the shop floor says and EngO's only put forward what they think should go through! (an unnecessary filter?)

AISTR there is only a few ways to send disagreements upwards in the forces - and they were renowned for being 'lost' at lower levels.

760/765 systems are probably still under-resourced, and lack any real flow, sometimes taking years before any action is seen and with no feedback to originators as to how they are progressing (probably because they dont progress) So staff will become used to seeing the wrong info in maitenance procedures and may not use them because they have no faith in them, and "guessing" (in that can-do attitude) what should be done because there is no feedback of what they should do.

I'm on a rant now - so I'll get me coat and go for a beer.

Safeware

31st Oct 2009, 22:02

Just came across this:

"But he has confirmed to me that his report does not raise concerns over the actual airworthiness of individual fleets.

.... because that wasn't in his TORs

"And I have been assured by the Chief of the Air Staff and the Defence Chief Airworthiness Engineer that our fleets remain safe to fly.

... a bold, but necessary statement?

from here: Ministry of Defence | Defence News | Defence Policy and Business | Ainsworth apologises for loss of Nimrod XV230 (http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/DefencePolicyAndBusiness/AinsworthApologisesForLossOfNimrodXv230.htm)

sw

nigegilb

31st Oct 2009, 22:31

Another front opens up tonight;

MoD sent men to die in ‘unsafe’ helicopter

Michael Smith

The overruling of aircraft safety warnings by the Ministry of Defence resulted in the deaths of six British servicemen in a helicopter crash, a senior official has revealed.

He also alleged that documents were withheld from the board of inquiry and the inquest to cover up the way in which airworthiness regulations were ignored. The former civil servant said he had refused to declare the Royal Navy’s Sea King Mk7 helicopters airworthy, but was overruled by superiors trying to save money.

He said that two years before two Sea Kings collided off Iraq in 2003, killing six Royal Navy officers and one American serviceman, he issued warnings about the risks. Anti-collision lights on Sea Kings had been replaced with strobe lights that “blinded the pilots at low level, over water or in mist — so they switched them off”. Consequently, the pilots lost sight of each other before the fatal collision, and became disorientated. A board of inquiry blamed the crash on several factors and ordered removal of the strobe lights.

Last night the mother of Marc Lawrence, 26, one of the Royal Navy officers killed, accused the MoD of a “whitewash”. Ann Lawrence said: “The inquest was a case of people forgetting where they were and losing key papers. It was a joke.”

Yesterday it emerged that Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, the most senior British officer to have died in Afghanistan, had warned his superiors that helicopter operations there were “not fit for purpose”.

nigegilb

1st Nov 2009, 08:32

And this morning;
Just to add that Mick has been tireless in his detailed reporting of XV230. Journos take a fair old bashing on this forum, but it would seem that this journalist is not phased by continually coming back to a subject that had "been done" many times before.

Servicemen betrayed by shortcuts over Nimrod's safety

Michael Smith

IT was three years ago this weekend when I revealed in this newspaper that a fuel leak on an ageing RAF Nimrod had caused an explosion that killed 14 British servicemen.

The fuel had leaked into the fuselage of the plane, which was on a mission near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and then ignited, possibly because of an electrical fault. The crew put out a Mayday call but they never stood a chance. The crash, in September 2006, remains the worst loss of life suffered by British forces in Afghanistan.

At the time I believed it was an unpredictable accident, that nobody would be found personally to blame, that nobody would have sent the crew up knowing the equipment was unsafe. I thought government ministers, senior RAF officers and civil servants would want to get to the bottom of the affair and sort it out to ensure nobody else died needlessly.

However, as news of further incidents of fuel leaks emerged, along with evidence from leaked e-mails and reports of the warnings that this was an accident waiting to happen, it slowly became clear that senior officers were making unthinkable decisions.

RELATED LINKS
Defence chiefs blamed for jet crash that killed 14
Nimrod report: the men in the frame
Hemmed in by rapidly shrinking budgets, they were sending servicemen and women to war in aircraft and vehicles that were simply not safe. Worse, nobody seemed to care.

Numerous warnings had been ignored. BAE Systems, the aircraft’s manufacturer, was rightly characterised last week by Charles Haddon-Cave, QC, in his devastating review of the disaster as “a company in denial” over Nimrod. But three years before the accident it had told the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that the aircraft needed fire-suppression systems fitted to make it safe. The suggestion was ignored on grounds of cost.

To a former serviceman who trusted the authorities to ensure that while we did our job they would protect us, it seemed the ultimate betrayal. Even in the aftermath of the crash, the RAF seemed to be ignoring reality. In an e-mail written shortly afterwards and reported by The Sunday Times, an RAF officer complained that the way in which crews were being kept in the dark was making matters worse.

The Nimrod had exploded just after air-to-air refuelling from a tanker plane, yet the officer indicated that the procedure was still being undertaken just days after the crash. “We’ve not heard a dicky bird then suddenly the ACC [air component commander] in the Gulf wants us airborne and tanker capable again,” he wrote. “So, we had a jet air-to-air refuelling over Kandahar four days after the accident!! Unbelievable.”

E-mails from staff at the Nimrod base at RAF Kinloss in Morayshire showed morale had collapsed. “It’s not a nice place to work just now,” one Nimrod crew member said.

By now the families of victims were becoming vociferous in expressing their concerns over the MoD’s apparent refusal to accept that anything was wrong. Graham Knight, the father of Sergeant Ben Knight, one of those killed, was leading what at times seemed a one-man campaign to find out what had happened. He was repeatedly stalled by officialdom.

The truth slowly emerged, however. In July 2007, The Sunday Times learnt that a year before the loss of the Nimrod, after a previous fuel leak, the station commander at Kinloss had warned that an “unexpected failure” was likely with a plane already 10 years past its out-of-service date.

A senior RAF officer said in a report into the leak that it was “a particular concern as the ageing Nimrod MR2 is extended beyond its original out-of-service date” of 1995. Meanwhile, the MoD continued to insist that “the Nimrod has an excellent safety record and is airworthy and fit to fly”.

It was little surprise when, after the board of inquiry confirmed that a catastrophic and predictable fuel leak had caused the loss of Nimrod XV230, that Des Browne, then defence secretary, provided civil servants to “assist” Haddon-Cave in his independent review of the affair.

Like many of the families I believed this was simply another cover-up. The report would be massaged by senior RAF officers sent in to work with Haddon-Cave. There was some reassurance in the way Haddon-Cave gathered evidence from former service officers and civil servants who were critical of the MoD’s lax approach to airworthiness. But it could not prepare anyone for the coruscating judgment he handed down last week.

Not only did he name officials and companies who had palpably failed to do their jobs, and as a result bore some responsibility for the deaths of the 14 men, he also categorically refuted the government’s spin that it has repeatedly increased defence budgets and that safety within the armed forces is not being undermined.

His most damning verdict was not solely about Nimrod, however. Working on evidence from a wide range of officials — including the former civil servant who today reveals the failure to apply airworthiness regulations on two Sea King helicopters that collided in Iraq — Haddon-Cave attacked the MoD’s entire airworthiness system as “not fit for purpose”.

He cited “a failure to adhere to basic principles” and a culture that put budgets above safety — a verdict that more than vindicated the Sunday Times campaign.

nigegilb

1st Nov 2009, 08:52

Another journo who has taken an interest in airworthiness issues is Andrew Johnson, this is his take on recent events in today's Indy.

MoD's Nimrod disgrace
After cost-cutting is blamed in devastating report on air crash that killed 14, ministry seeks further 'efficiency savings'

By Andrew Johnson
Sunday, 1 November 2009SHARE PRINTEMAILTEXT SIZE
The devastating report into the Nimrod crash that killed 14 service personnel in Afghanistan in 2006 may have sent shockwaves through Whitehall, but it will not have surprised RAF personnel who believe that at least four other fatal crashes can be blamed on cost-cutting.

Charles Haddon-Cave QC used his report to accuse the Ministry of Defence of "a systematic breach of the Military Covenant" for putting its savings drive ahead of air safety. And yesterday the issue of helicopter shortages was highlighted by a leaked memo written by Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, who was killed in Afghanistan in July. He had cautioned that too many troops were being transported by roads, just weeks before he fell victim to a roadside bomb.

The Nimrod's safety record and issues at the centre of other fatal crashes have been highlighted by The Independent on Sunday over the past three years as part of its Military Covenant campaign.

Military pilots also highlight the collision of two Sea King helicopters in March 2003 that killed seven servicemen. A system to help pilots to spot other helicopters at night was switched off because it was fitted incorrectly and interfered with their sight.

Shortly afterwards a Tornado jet was shot down by in a "friendly fire" incident because of a known flaw in the identification system. Both crew members died. In 2005 10 people died when a Hercules transport plane was shot down. It had not been fitted with explosion-suppressant foam, which could have saved it, despite recommendations that it should be.

Two years later a Puma helicopter crashed, killing two crew. At the inquest in August the pilot said the aircraft was missing a vital piece of safety equipment and was not airworthy.

Next month safety will again come under scrutiny when a legal action brought by the relatives of the Hercules victims will be heard, while the inquest into the two men who died in the Puma crash resumes.

The Nimrod families are also pursuing a court action against the MoD, and are considering a corporate manslaughter action against BAE Systems and the defence company QinetiQ, which were also criticised by Mr Haddon-Cave.

With families of soldiers killed in Land Rovers also suing on the grounds that equipment shortages amounted to a breach of Article 2 of the Human Rights Act – the right to life – it opens up a potential Pandora's box of litigation, according to John Cooper, the barrister representing the Nimrod, Hercules and Puma families.

Air Commodore George Baber, the RAF officer in charge of the Nimrod safety check, was criticised in the report for "failing to make safety his first priority". Two months prior to the crash Air Commodore Baber had been put in charge of airworthiness for every plane and helicopter in the fleet.

Despite questions about the aircraft's safety record being raised after the explosion, Air Commodore Baber was not removed until a few months ago – after Mr Haddon-Cave informed those he intended to criticise.

Graham Knight, whose son Ben was one of those killed on the Nimrod, said the MoD was still "in denial".

"They gave the head of the Nimrod squadron an MBE for building morale after the crash," he said.

Despite the report pinning the Nimrod disaster on efficiency savings and the use of private companies, the MoD is poised to announce further cuts by outsourcing the support of front-line troops. A confidential briefing sent to MoD managers last week said: "Past efficiencies have been derived from a range of innovative arrangements with industry. The review encourages the adoption of these arrangements more broadly."

Steve Jary, the national secretary of Prospect, the union that represents MoD staff, said: "It is astonishing that the MoD is going ahead with this, just a week after the report into the Nimrod disaster. That report was a wake-up call to think again about the effect of constant change programmes, cuts and privatisation. It seems the MoD will never learn and will continue to put the lives of service personnel at unnecessary risk."

An MoD spokesman said: "Air Commodore Baber is no longer employed in a role with any connection to airworthiness or safety."

Distant Voice

1st Nov 2009, 10:50

For me the one "cloud" over the H-C report is the "attack" on the Coroner's finding regarding the possible source of the fuel. The report returns to the "blow-off" theory, which, according to the BOI "Circumstantial evidence suggested that the former [overflow] was the probable source of fuel" (not 50-50, as stated in the H-C report). Having now completed my reading of the report, I find the so called "new evidence" flawed and selective. (examples below)

The report talks about an incident in Dec 2006 (Incident 066/06) and claims that, "no convincing explanation for the fuel leak could be determined." Yet 066/06 Air Incident report states that "When the refuel gallery was pressurised to 20 psi a fuel leak was observed.......The leak rate was 25 drips per min. Pipe work seals to be examined and replaced as necessary." This is twice the rate set for an "unacceptable leak" (see page 76 of the report). The rate is likely to have been much higher during AAR with pressure around 50 psi. For me, this seem a convining explanation for fuel in the bomb bay.

The report fails to mention Air Incident 060/06, Nov 2006. The report on this states "Leak confirmed from cross feed pipe as 12 drips per min static, 42 drips per min under pressure from ac pumps" AND "No 1 tk blow off valve was also examined for evidence of fuel being released. There was no fuel evident in the area of the blow off valve"

The report gives little coverage of the 2007 incident involving XV235, other than to say "A crew member noticed what appeared to be spray emitting from the fuel system". In fact what was reported was "Approximately 20 seconds after requesting the Carter pump on, the crew member who was monitoring the bomb bay through the periscope reported fuel spraying into the bomb bay and fluid lying on the bomb bay doors. The bomb bay periscope was manned as this was the first AR flight the aircraft had undertaken since an FRS coupling change in Oct 07. The crew member and the captain had discussed this pre flight and had identified the area of the new FRS coupling". The FRS coupling had been changed because a leak had been found during ground testing (RTI/NIM/170). Ground Incident Report, 902/007 was raised, but this is not mentioned in the H-C report.

There is mention of a dye test carried out in 2006 (New evidence?). The report makes no mention of whether this fluid was ejected under pressure, as per a blow-off, or simply released from the aircraft. Rain will track down the outside of the aircraft.

Sorry, my money is still with the Coroner. I can not find anything convincing from H-C technical adviser (President of the BOI). Fuel in the bomb bay arrived from fuel leaks in the bomb bay. There are many more examples to support the Coroner's theory which I have not mentioned, and are certainly not mentioned in the H-C report.

DV

Tappers Dad

1st Nov 2009, 13:35

DV

I noticed this in the review:

The BOI took a copy of the list of destroyed documents and determined that there was nothing within them that could be immediately relevant to their investigation. Indeed, over the months that followed none of the documents was required by the BOI. The file was unlikely to contain anything of direct relevance to the loss of XV230 and it could, in the main, have been reconstituted if required.

Now I am pretty sure I saw a FOI that said they could NOT be reconstituted, correct me if I am wrong.

Rotary Girl

1st Nov 2009, 14:02

It is a very sobering read especially if you currently have a job with delegated airworthiness responsibilities!

It will be very interesting to see how the RTSA deals with the imminent sign off of the Chinook HC Mk3s that are reportedly due to enter service before the end of the year.

If the rumoured 'issues' surrounding this particular white elephant are to be believed, I for one, would think long and hard before authorising a Release to Service in order to satisfy the political pressure to finally get the aircraft flying. Just because the 'reversion' programme was heralded as a means to deliver the 8 ac into service within 2 years (from Mar 2007!) I would hope that the H-C report will prevent a re-occurrence of the rushed Chinook Mk2 introduction.

Hopefully the H-C report will indeed prevent the possibility of a repeat of the Nimrod tragedy.

VinRouge

1st Nov 2009, 14:03

TD, saw you earlier on Politics Show South West.

Brilliant comments by some ex-army star rank, including a comment that the report didnt go far enough in blaming up the command structure, IE Gordon, Tony and former defence secs were all culpable in his view. I would sincerely agree.

Also commented on conflict of interest in terms of risks to troops associated with drops in Air Force Op capability... This for me has always been the big issue, with boys and girls having to go flying in unservicable aircraft, anything other being seen as "LMF" by hierarchy and a major moral issue for those put in that situation. This lack of management needs changing.

We should never again put our people in a situation where risk assessment that needs to be taken at star level is taken by guys at the coalface, on far less pay and suffer the consequences of flying unservicable aircraft.

Those due to retire on 100% pay should bow their heads in shame. There were numerous calls for falling on swords,to raise public awareness, yet it never happened. Air power doesnt come cheap. If you dont have the cash or resource to support an Op requiring extensive Air effects, we shouldnt commit to the Op. Its as simple as that.

BBC iPlayer - The Politics Show South West: 01/11/2009 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/the_politics_show_south_west)

biddedout

1st Nov 2009, 14:03

The total lack of coverage of this report in the RAF News (online) probably speaks volumes about the modern management culture within the armed forces.

Distant Voice

1st Nov 2009, 15:09

TD, you are correct, and the FOI reply reads as follows:

"This means that the enclosure titles on this list may not be exact original document titles but may be recorded with an informal title, or an abbreviated form of the original tiltle. Without knowing the original document titles it is almost impossible to identify with absolute certainty which documents some of them may have been. Furthermore it means that being able to identify the originator of the documents(to ascertain if anaother copy even still exists) is also almost impossible"

Based on this statement I am not sure how the BOI and the review came to the conclusions they did. A bit like the source of fuel.

DV

Mick Smith

1st Nov 2009, 15:39

DV/TD
The review's main advisers were the board chairman and the engineering officer who sat on the board, what do you expect! They have spent a lot of time concluding one thing, they arent going to suggest it might be another.

Excellent though the review was in many ways, it was very sad to see the criticism of a coroner, who did his job as well as could be expected and came far closer than anyone else to giving the families closure, until Wednesday that is.

At one point H-C slams Walker for saying one thing when if he actually read what he said properly they would have realised he was saying the exact opposite.

It was also sad, given the power he had, that he didnt question ministers. I would have loved to hear Buff's defence!

Duncan D'Sorderlee

1st Nov 2009, 16:52

Folks,

I am still of the opinion that the 'Stop Press' is a red herring. There is plenty about for you to get your teeth into. Returning to the SP would IMHO be a waste of your effort.

Duncs:ok:

Distant Voice

1st Nov 2009, 16:55

Mick Smith, well said. Their understanding of the coroner's source of fuel is a classic.

The discrediting of the of the Coroner's finding (Chapter 16) is in marked contrast with "Didn't the BOI do well" (Chapter 15). So many things have been done "As recommended by the BOI". Not so. The claim that "As a result of a further key BOI recommendation, a Hot Air Duct Replacement Programme was initiated", really is pushing it a bit too far. The programme was initiated by the XV227 investigation team. From their recommendation to examine the likelihood of other ducts being in a similar condition to that which failed, BAE generated reports in Jan 05, June 05 and Feb 2007, which idendified the ducts we are now replacing. Although these reports were available under FOI, they were not requested or seen by the BOI.

Nick and John, you have done a great job and I am sure that there will be rewards in the "New Years" list for you both. There is no need to discredit the Coroner, because he did not agree with you, or lay claims to things you did not uncover.

DV

Distant Voice

1st Nov 2009, 17:04

DD'S: You are missing TD's point. Its not about the contents of the "Stop Press" folder, it is about how the facts can be "twisted" to suit someones case.

DV

Duncan D'Sorderlee

1st Nov 2009, 17:20

DV,

I take your point. However, H-C states that the SP could 'in the main' be reconstructed and the FOI response mentions 'absolute certainty'; I would argue both are correct - one is a bit of a cop out however!

Duncs:ok:

Distant Voice

1st Nov 2009, 17:26

DD'S; The FOI reply actually goes on to say that the folder was not reconstructed.

DV

Tappers Dad

1st Nov 2009, 17:40

DV
I didn't think it needed pointing out but yes, either the MOD were not truthfull to Mr HC or they weren't truthful in their answer to an FOI request.:=

The eaarlier link to the politics show was incorrect this is it BBC iPlayer - The Politics Show West: 01/11/2009 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/the_politics_show_west) it starts after about 30 mins.

The Poison Dwarf

2nd Nov 2009, 00:03

TD

Graham, I can only echo what has already been said, firstly, my continuing condolence for your loss, as ineffectual as that condolence may be.

Secondly my congratulations on your determination and tenacity in pursuing the matter, in getting the inquiry conducted and the report published and thirdly, but not least, the dignity that you and your whole family have shown throughout, for what it's worth, all of you have my respect.

I was in the fleet for some 20 years, on MR1s and MR2s (including a tour on 120) and I loved the aircraft, loved the job and trusted both my aircrew colleagues and the people who serviced the aircraft, I never knew Ben, he came to the fleet long after I had left but I suspect that he felt pretty much the same.

Had I known the design flaws that the report has highlighted would I have wished to continue doing the job? The answer is an almost unequivocal YES, but that is purely my feelings about the job that I did and the era in which I did it.

Am I surprised at the ostrich mentality of the military/political/MoD/industrial consortium? Not in the least - I am reminded of a phrase that one of my early day mentors used "Those that have the bottle don't have the power and those that have the power don't have the bottle, just make the best of it - never forget that".

That those who have been named and shamed are not the ones solely responsible is, to a large extent, irrelevant, the problem goes way back beyond their tenure BUT, if you were to ask a Very Senior Officer/Senior Civil Servant/Minister/Captain of Industry what their job is he (or she) would likely reply "Well, I'm responsible for.....", (I know because I've asked that question - the damage to my career was short lived, after all they're only in post for 2 years).

OK, well, it happened on their watch so time for them to accept the responsibility for which they have been so well paid all these years, just as I and my colleagues and many others accepted the risks of military aviation at their behest, both in peacetime and in times of conflict.

If you follow the profession of arms, you accept that there is risk, but unnecessary risk, uncaring risk, thoughtless risk, greedy risk, is simply unacceptable, it's nothing new, it's just unacceptable.

I have said it before but it bears repeating, Crew 3 paid the price for the pernicious penny-pinching of a government who would rather spend OUR money on political correctness training, allied to a promotion system that has, all too often, rewarded the "yes" men - consider this (I'm sure you have), faced with a choice of promotion to a senior or very senior position, who is more likely to get it, the person who stands up and says "we can't do it like that" or the person who says "my men will cope"? Hmm difficult eh?

The fact is that most "leaders" are leaders purely by virtue of the sheer professionalism of those that they "lead" and that is true of the military, the MoD and industry.

The final blame must lie with the Scrooges in the Treasury, successive Governments who willingly bend the knee (as long as it doesn't compromise their expenses), the LMF of the majority of the senior armed force hierarchy, senior civil servants who, at best don't understand the question and at worst are only interested in a knighthood, and a defence industry that has grown up thinking that it can milk the system for all it's worth and never take the consequences.

US President Harry S Truman clearly defined where the buck stops, who in the British political system will stand up and be counted? Is that an eerie silence I hear?

If I sound cynical, well, one man's cynicism is another man's reality check, I make no apologies.

TPD

lunchbreak

2nd Nov 2009, 09:56

Biggus Are you saying I should trust what I am being told by N0 2 Group ? Let me think er NO I don't take anything as being true I am told until I am sure it is so. ------------------------------------------------ FYI baber was moved sharply across to head of the customer support team for chief of material Air within DES now. If you look at page 389 of HCs report - figure 13.6, you'll get an idea (if you can make out the references to safety in the CofM's roles) of that departments theoretical role. (i say that because the CofM role is different across the domains - and i haven't had a great deal of sight of what CofM(Air) get's up to regarding safety. However the main purpose of the role was meant to address issues across the DES and forces 'boundary' - including safety)

woptb

2nd Nov 2009, 10:08

With regard to 'just culture' & a workable error management system,there is a programme being rolled out across the RAF.Its based on the EASA model,
it's a good system ,if its allowed to work!
While I share the view that government spending cuts played a great part,these were accepted and administered by a series of CDS/CAS.
I don't remember any resignations or major war's of words,so should they also bear some responsability?

Biggles225

2nd Nov 2009, 14:00

Sorry Rigga, I think I have to disagree with you. So this is me in my antique CDSE hat, quite prepared to be told 'But we dont do it that way any more'.

To the mods, I apologise for any thread drift.

"760/765 systems are probably still under-resourced, and lack any real flow, sometimes taking years before any action is seen and with no feedback to originators as to how they are progressing (probably because they dont progress) So staff will become used to seeing the wrong info in maitenance procedures and may not use them because they have no faith in them, and "guessing" (in that can-do attitude) what should be done because there is no feedback of what they should do."

There was always a way to request change to an AP or MP, F765, and it's a laid down procedure. (Can't exactly remember where now). Yes, they are resource intensive, but once analyzed and trialled feedback was always made to the originator, with reasons for and against as applicable, and the Procedure was amended if necessary. I dont think that regular updates, although a good idea, would fit with todays policy and/or manning levels. In my day there was a line open for anyone on the shop floor to communicate with CSDE Schedules directly and speak to an author or analyst if they had a problem with a servicing procedure. This was not vetted, and we didnt usually tell the station heirachy, because it worried them that they didn't control it!

I wholly agree with you about the unofficial 'filter' - I remember one OCEng 'sausage side' who wouldn't pass them up the system because they weren't written in 'schedulese', and he had a filing cabinet full of them! I'm sure he wasn't the only one either. That's what's happened to your 765s in many cases, and its bloody disgraceful.

760s were a different beastie, because quite often it took input from the manufacturer before anything much could be done, and that takes time, especially as theres no kudos in contracting to the Royal Air Force any more.

Please don't think that just because nothing apparent has been happening, it isn't going to, its a bit like a swan, calm on top and going like hell underneath. I promise you. :}

Winco

2nd Nov 2009, 14:23

The Poison Dwarf

Sir,
In your post above YOU state...

"Had I known the design flaws that the report has highlighted would I have wished to continue doing the job? The answer is an almost unequivocal YES"

I don't know if you are a pilot, but assuming that you are, are you really telling us that you would have happily flown an aircraft knowing it had a design fault/flaw?? Honestly?

I flew Nimrod Mk1 and Mk2 for quite a few years, and I can tell you that had I known those facts, then I hope I would have had the balls to say that I wasn't prepared to risk the lives of my crew until they were sorted out. It might well have cut my career short, but I would have peace of mind.

(The rest of your posting I agree with 100% by the way!)

Winco

Tappers Dad

2nd Nov 2009, 17:18

I have beeen asked to go on the radio tomorrow, following my interview one queston I have asked will be put to Bill Rammell in an interview with him. If you were me what one question would you ask ?

Sensible replies only please.

Safeware

2nd Nov 2009, 18:11

TD,

wrt my #1687...

Given the H-C criticisms of the airworthiness system as a whole, how can the MOD demonstrate that all of its aircraft types are airworthy?

sw

Distant Voice

2nd Nov 2009, 19:31

TD.

My question would be, "Why did they tarnish the report by trying to discredit Andrew Walker?"

DV

phanphix

2nd Nov 2009, 19:40

The point made by Safeware is a critical one. I would be interested to know of all the Safety Cases constructed on legacy platforms following the introduction of the legislation, how many highlighted a fundamental design flaw, such as that which existed on Nimrod, and led to safety related modification action being taken. If the answer is zero, and I wouldn't put money against that being the case, are we to assume either all legacy platforms were designed perfectly or the cases are equally likely to have flaws?

Rigga

2nd Nov 2009, 20:11

My Vote's with Safeware - a simple question that everyone will want to know the answer to.

Biggles,

Thanks for your reply - I don't doubt whatsoever that is what used to happen at CSDE - I remember asking for info from there too. But I can't even remember now, when CSDE closed? I once drove my daughter to Swanton Morley for her first driving lesson - on the airfield, via a broken gate! She was 17 then and is now 23.

As Mr H-C points out, there have been some huge changes, and not all for the better, since then.

insty66

2nd Nov 2009, 20:36

wrt my #1687...

Given the H-C criticisms of the airworthiness system as a whole, how can the MOD demonstrate that any of its aircraft types are airworthy?

swCorrected that for you!

After all the cuts were applied across the IPT spectrum as a whole.

Safeware

2nd Nov 2009, 20:42

Insty, thanks....

However, a satisfactory answer to your modification would only require demonstration that one aircraft type was airworthy.

My original does not allow a satisfactory answer without all being airworthy.

Semantics [ but formal methods do that to you :) ] but it is something a politician would gleefully jump on.

sw

insty66

2nd Nov 2009, 20:51

Semantics [ but formal methods do that to you http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/smile.gif ] but it is something a politician would gleefully jump on.

Then I thank f**k I don't work with any (real) politicians.

'Tis a good question though.:D

nigegilb

2nd Nov 2009, 21:12

Given that Bill Rammell has a majority of 97 I'd ask him what he intends to do when he loses his seat at the next election :ok:

Good luck Graham, give em what for..

"In the 2005 election, he had the 3rd smallest majority of any Labour MP, at just 97 votes. The result was so close that the final declaration had to be delayed 2 days after voting, in order to give exhausted counting officials time to rest."

Tappers Dad

2nd Nov 2009, 21:21

Does anyone know how many safety cases have been carried out by BAE or are being carried out by them ?

Tappers Dad

2nd Nov 2009, 21:33

Thanks for that info re Rammell Nige I see on theyworkforyou.com he
Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.
Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.

Might explain how he got the job.

Safeware

2nd Nov 2009, 21:48

"Does anyone know how many safety cases have been carried out by BAE or are being carried out by them ?"

Could be a "How long is a piece of string? kind of question.

They will have one for each aircraft that they are Design Organisation. (Plus a 1/4 share in Typhoon)

But they will (or should!!!) also have a safety case for pieces of equipment that they produce. ie if they are responsible for providing missile x, targetting pod y, bomb z etc etc, then they should have a safety case that will allow the integrator (whoever that may be) to "inherit" the risks and mitigate them where required.

And I assume that you are only thinking about aircraft for the moment. But the need for a safety case covers all major military equipment. So, ships, submarines, vehicles, UAVs, artillery etc etc produced by BAES, should all have a safety case.

sw

Boozydragon

2nd Nov 2009, 23:25

I would like to think that those responsible for the catalogue of errors which led to loss of XV230 both civilian and military will be dealt with either by Courts Martial and/or cases brough through the civilian legal system. Regardless of the incident, there always seems to be the attitude of 'it was like this when I got here Chief'.

Whilst it is true that the issues which culminated in the accident have been handed from Senior Officer/BAES employee/Government Minister, that does not excuse the continued malpractice. I suspect however that those responsible will be ushered off to retirement and the opportunity to grip this once and for all will be lost. I am not a fan of the litigation obsession we have inherited from the US, the fact that GB or BAES may be 'sorry' is simply not good enough and they should be held to account for their actions or lack thereof.

There are other personalities in the very recent past who by pure luck were not in post at the time of the loss of 120/3 who are equally culpable and are now breathing a sigh of relief, eg the previous Head of AV. Nothing would focus the minds of all of us involved in AW than a summons to appear in court. :*

Tappers Dad

3rd Nov 2009, 08:43

My question to Bill Rammell this morning can be found here http://benknight.co.uk/D_Bill%20Rammell%20Somerset%20radio%203rd%20nov%2009.mp3 his answer and a bit of tension between the presenter and Bill Rammell.

fincastle84

3rd Nov 2009, 09:23

Tapper's Dad, I just listened to BR on Radio Somerset. I don't know how you manage to restrain yourself when in the company of such a weasel as Bill Rammell & his boss Ainsworth.
Just rest assured that there are many like myself who hope that one day you achieve justice for the victims & closure & peace of mind for yourself.

MrBernoulli

3rd Nov 2009, 09:44

Ye gods! Even the senior officers now sound like they have taken their 'PR lessons' from the same cunch of bunts as those that tutor the politicians! The same trite phrases and weasely-worded ****e that is used day-in, day-out by the inhabitants of that oversized playpen sited next to Parliament Square.

All of the blah and hot air that these mouth-pieces now use is designed only to take up airtime or column inches, whilst explaining nothing - absolutely nothing! Wuckfits, the lot of them!

Sorry ....... had to get it off my chest ...... I just can't abide it all ....... :(

helgar33

4th Nov 2009, 20:11

I just listened to the interview with Bill Rammell (link posted above) and must say that he behaved in the same manner as he did with all of us last week. On the issue of a follow up meeting: - I am reluctant to believe that he will have ANY information for us as it has only been a week and he would not comment on the many issues we raised last week...I could just be being pessimistic but I am beginning to lose faith. I am sick of being spoken to as if I am part of military personnel and as a person who has not experienced the loss of a loved one and also of being shouted down. This interview gives those of you who were not allowed to attend the meeting a pretty good idea of the tone that Bill uses. There isn't any humility, compassion or indeed there wasn't even an apology for Chris Davies who arrived a little later than the main group (due to taxi's being late...which Bill's staff had organised). She said that all she wanted was an apology from him. Bill said he had already given one. When pressed he said he had given an apology at the start...in other words he wasn't going to repeat it. I expect him to apolgise until he is sick of apologising, but refusing to give an apology twice takes the biscuit! The thing that worries me the most is that Bill has exactly the sort of attitude that Haddon-Cave criticised.

On another matter I have been asked to put up a link on this post to my piece in the local paper today. They didn't use all my statement but the main parts are in there. I hope that some of you will be pleased that I passed on thoughts from this thread as well as my own opinion.
If you don't agree with what I've said...please be gentle with me. Ta. Helen.
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/news/Widow-speaks-budget-safety/article-1479386-detail/article.html

Tappers Dad

4th Nov 2009, 22:04

helgar33

If you think Bill Rammell was rude, Gordon brown was rattled today in PMQ's go to BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | The Full Story: PM's questions (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8342225.stm) 30 mins in a question by Angus Robertson.
He couldn't say Nimrod correctly.

helgar33

5th Nov 2009, 09:57

Thanks for the link Graham.
The thing I can't get my head around is why Gordon Brown has been waiting for the Haddon-Cave report to be revealed before he would push our compensation claims forward? The BOI concluded that it was a design fault, the coroner also concluded on design faults...so why the wait? The end of next year is the date we have been given so far...hardly 'expeditious' as Des Browne had promised. These empty promises are disgraceful...especially after all we have been through..the future uncertainties are sickening and very worrying.

Distant Voice

8th Nov 2009, 16:43

34 cross-feed valves have been changed since January 2008. (Defective cross-feed valves result in high cross-feed temps, even when indicating "closed" on the flight deck)

Between June 2008 and May 2009 there were 13 fuel leaks from pipes and 29 from couplings (Includes 2 incident reports).

DV

Distant Voice

10th Nov 2009, 15:06

Just read this on Mick Smith's blog

Mick Smith - Times Online - WBLG: Nimrod: Why Attack the Coroner? (http://timesonline.typepad.com/mick_smith/2009/11/nimrod-why-attack-the-coroner.html)

grousehunter

10th Nov 2009, 22:55

tucumseh

11th Nov 2009, 06:46

Does anyone remember a number of years ago, perhaps even a few months before the crash that the RAF statisticians came to kinloss to give a presentation? I remember that they said at the time that "we (the RAF) were statistically due a large aircraft loss". At the time that gave me much food for thought, in fact it troubled me greatly. I had no idea what was to come. Was that dramatic wake up call acknowledged but then ignored?

All I can presume is that it was as I have not seen it in H C report. I just wondered what if any impact that department had on flight safety.

All services are allowed, in fact required, by PUS to assume a given attrition rate for every aircraft. The rate is used to inform forward provisioning i.e. make EP bids to replace in advance. It is a peacetime device. These stats don’t say HOW an aircraft will be lost – part of the formula is life-ex.

This process has not been used for many years, despite being the subject of many a critical audit report. That is, the policy has moved from maintaining capability to adjusting capability or tasking to compensate for attrition. Now we are at war, the problem is exacerbated as tasking has increased despite attrition.

You ask what impact that department has on flight safety. I'm a civvy and that job was something you used to do before being allowed to manage a project. My terms of reference included a statement that I could overrule EP instructions using engineering judgment. It is a unique authority in MoD. Again, it is no longer implemented.

What is far more relevant is that in 2005 (before XV230 was lost) Adam Ingram was warned, in writing, that the airworthiness regulations were not being implemented properly, and had not been for some years. He denied it, in writing. The people who advised him to say this should be named and shamed before those in the H-C report.

Good post on Mick Smith’s blog.

ninja-lewis

11th Nov 2009, 09:36

Do you have a link to the letter to Adam Ingram (and his response)?

tucumseh

11th Nov 2009, 14:29

NL

No link. If you want Ingram's response (which spells out the original statement in full, then denies it) I suggest you submit a FoI request asking for Ingram's written correspondence on airworthiness, to other MPs, while in office. Ask for the briefing notes as well - you can often glean from them WHO advised him.

Of equal concern now is why Mr Haddon-Cave chose not to refer to this evidence in his report. It was submitted to him. After all, his task arose from the statement in the Nimrod BoI report that airworthiness regulations were not being implemented properly. One would have thought he would regard as key evidence letters which clearly illustrate that ACM Loader's statement was not a revelation, but a mere reiteration of long known facts. His report was damning but, as I said before, it is compartmentalised to such a degree that there are quite a few individuals breathing a sigh of relief he (a) didn't go further back than 1999, (b) selected the easy targets while protecting those above them and (c) concentrated on the Nimrod Safety case when the point made by ACM Loader was that (by definition) the failings also applied to other aircraft.

But, rest assured, slowly but surely the details will emerge.

Chugalug2

11th Nov 2009, 17:31

tucumseh, confirmation of your conviction that it was the deliberate and orchestrated replacement of qualified and experienced engineers with unqualified (for the job) stackers and scribblers:
Reinstate qualified RAF engineers -Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article6910001.ece) :
Sir, Having spent most of my working life involved with the airworthiness of many types of military aircraft, I read the detailed and forensic report into the loss of Nimrod XV230 with great interest and deep concern (report, Oct 29). There are serious aspects of the report that should concern the public who ought to demand thoroughgoing changes to restore faith in the airworthiness of our military aircraft.

The age of our Nimrod fleet is not unusual for a military aircraft. Our defence budget only allows us to replace aircraft fleets every 30 years or so, and usually heavier aircraft remain in service for longer. During these extended lifetimes aircraft normally change roles and have many different operating procedures. Standard design and maintenance safety regulations are frequently challenged by these changes and new methods of achieving the required levels of safety have to be worked out. All such changes have to be tracked throughout the remaining life of the fleet and new generations of maintenance personnel trained to understand their implications for the long-term battle against the inevitable consequences of metal fatigue, corrosion and the like. The resulting programmes require the reservation of funds and facilities for many years ahead. However, day-to-day problems and crisis arising from training and operations are urgent and never ending. Inevitably, there is a temptation to neglect the longer term with potential disastrous consequences.

From the formation of RAF Strike Command in the early Sixties the engineering branch of the RAF met these challenges by co-locating all the specialist engineering staff for each aircraft in a single office — the Role Office — and required each office to prepare an annual review of its long-term airworthiness plans. By the late 1990s these reviews were heard by the Chief Engineer himself so that he could satisfy the responsibility that all RAF aircraft were airworthy.

The XV230 report details that early this century the post of Chief Engineer was discontinued, that the chain of delegation now no longer passes through the hands of properly qualified and experienced engineers. Instead, it seems to follow the chain of command, which could and did include not just non-engineers but also personnel who had no experience of military aircraft operation. In addition, a whole management layer was removed and with it the capability to supervise the Role Offices — now expanded and retitled integrated project teams. This was a recipe for disaster. It was akin to giving a GP responsibility for the quality and extent of cancer care — or even giving the task to a non-medical person.

The report into XV230 rightly takes to task personnel who failed to meet the standards required of them, but it does not address the larger problem of allowing airworthiness responsibility to be held by untrained personnel. Nor does it sufficiently criticise the convoluted dissipation of airworthiness responsibility in the new tri-service logistic organisation so that the heavy weight of this task is not clearly laid on specific individuals. The public should demand the immediate restoration of airworthiness responsibility to those who are qualified and trained to handle it.

Air Vice-Marshal K. A. Campbell RAF (Ret’d)

tucumseh

11th Nov 2009, 18:21

Chug

Thanks for this. A concise letter, summarising many pprune posts.

The "non-engineers" bit is particularly galling. When AMSO was formed in the early 90s, the edict came down - any admin grade was senior to any (civilian) engineer. The young lady who was appointed as my line manager was 2 grades below me. That particular problem was fixed quickly (much to her relief) but funding to investigate critical safety failures was routinely refused by her supplier colleagues, even more junior than the above young lady. Not all I may say, but sufficient to cause real safety probelms. I've still got a letter from an Admin Assistant telling me that as "reliability increases with age, and this is old equipment (the example was in C130), there is no need for fault investigations". Her bosses, all the way up to Director General Support Management (2 Star), supported her. When you have airworthiness delegation but the system encourages others to prevent you doing your job, then you always retain evidence! (Which is why Air Cdre Baber's evidence will be interesting if he ends up in court).

While both the AVM and Haddon-Cave make a point of saying the Chief Engineer post still existed until recently, in MoD(PE) the Chief of Defence Procurement announced in 1996 that he wanted rid of 500 engineers from AbbeyWood. He compounded this 2 years later (December 1998) by ruling that non-engineers could make or over-rule engineering design and airworthiness decisions, so completely ignoring the regulations on delegation and scrutiny. This ruling is still upheld / supported today, not least by Ainsworth.

Like I say, far worse than those named by Haddon-Cave.

Boozydragon

11th Nov 2009, 21:12

Some interesting comments regarding civilian admin or stackers turning down requests for funds for fault investigations. I doesn't really matter what the grade/rank of the person is or indeed the trade/branch because at the end of the day they are not the specialist and should not be expected to see the full ramifiactions of their actions. That is why we have specialist, qualified personnel in key posts to effect the checks and balances required. We can't get away from the fact that this is our responsibility as leaders. If 'the computer say's no' are we not beholden to ask why or even explain the ramifications. In my experience such personnel do not have the knowledge /interest in such matters and are merely following the rules and regualations set down - this is where the leadership bit comes in. At some point someone has to raise their voice and say that something is wrong and yes if required to hold onto the evidence for the subsequent BOI. We should be challenging the Loggie 'Tail' when required and remember that 'the standard you walk past is the standard we set'.

tucumseh

11th Nov 2009, 22:16

Boozy

If 'the computer say's no' are we not beholden to ask why or even explain the ramifications. In my experience such personnel do not have the knowledge /interest in such matters and are merely following the rules and regualations set down - this is where the leadership bit comes in. At some point someone has to raise their voice and say that something is wrong and yes if required to hold onto the evidence for the subsequent BOI. We should be challenging the Loggie 'Tail' when required and remember that 'the standard you walk past is the standard we set'.

Absolutely spot on. However, DGSM ruled in December 1992 that it was a sackable offence to challenge the "system" in the way you describe. (He threatened me with dismissal for seeking to, inter alia, maintain airworthiness). Over in MoD(PE), and later DPA and DLO, this ruling was also implemented, but it was "merely" a formal warning. Faced with such "leadership" (bullying) there are many who simply give in.

Rigga

11th Nov 2009, 22:27

...and I am sure there are equally some quietly waiting for their time to come...

Distant Voice

12th Nov 2009, 07:13

At para 7.30 of the H-C report, it states;

"It was worth remembering, however, that in the case of XV230, the BOI recorded that the centre section overheat warning was not reported as activated by what was, without doubt, a large fire within the aircraft's starboard No.7 Tank Dry Bay, the heat from which reached into the bomb bay. The BOI did note that there could be two explanations for this: (1) the electrical power to the system could have been distrupted by the fire before it could register the rise in temperature; or (2) another possibility was that the centre section overheat was triggered at about the same time as the other alarms, but the air engineer chose not to mention it on intercom as it was, by then, superfluous."

Can someone remind me as to where this appears in the BOI report

DV

Creeping Line Ahead

12th Nov 2009, 07:51

Bottom of Para 27, top of page 2-16

dc1968

12th Nov 2009, 08:20

H-C Pg 493

I make Recommendations for the creation of a New Military Airworthiness Regime under ten headings:

A. New Military Airworthiness Authority.
B. Clearly identified Airworthiness ‘Duty Holders’.
C. Proper training in Airworthiness Management and Regulatory skills.
D. Proper system of Mandatory Reporting and Analysis.
E. Single Safety Case and single Risk Management System.
F. New joint independent Accident Investigation process.
G. Readable and concise Airworthiness Regulations.
H. Coherent Flight Safety management across the three Services.
I. Clarification of Integrated Project Team Responsibilities.
J. Restoration of the Chief Engineer

I personally think that H-C has more than addressed the whole MAA issue. It just all depends on how these recommendations are actioned from this point on.

Distant Voice

12th Nov 2009, 08:37

Many thanks CLA for that prompt reply. Having read the paragraphs you have mentioned, I have always regarded that as an explanation as to why there is no recording of the aileron bay warning being activated. However, the final part of para 27 does mention the Centre Section Overheat warning. So we now have a double sensor failure (or failure to notice).

I have always been troubled by the fact that if the fire started as a "pool" fire at the bottom of dry bay No 7, why did the heat sensor in that bay not trigger the waring light on the Eng's pannel? Mr Breakell was the first person to bring this sensor to everyones notice at the inquest.

Mr Rawlinson (Counsel for the families) went on to say;

"And yet we have had numerous engineers, technicians, service engineers, even Mr Nelson, who have given evidence that there was nothing there."

I believe that such information should have been included in the H-C report.

DV

ORAC

17th Dec 2009, 09:56

RAF officers investigated over Nimrod crash (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/16/nimrod-crash-raf-officers-investigation)

Two senior RAF officers criticised in a devastating report into the crash of an Nimrod aircraft over Afghanistan with the loss of all 14 people on board are being investigated by military police, Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, said today.

He also announced that a new Military Aviation Authority would regulate, independently audit and monitor all military aviation activity, and said a review was under way into the way the MoD drew up contracts with arms companies.

Ainsworth was responding to a report in October by Charles Haddon-Cave QC, who referred to systemic and "lamentable" failings by the MoD, Britain's biggest arms company, BAE Systems and the privatised defence research company Qinetiq. He said the crash of the ageing Nimrod – involving the biggest single loss of life of British service personnel since the Falklands war – could have been avoided if those in charge of ensuring the safety of RAF aircraft had been more responsible.

Haddon-Cave, an aviation expert, said safety had become secondary to cost at the MoD. He described the Nimrod's production as "a story of incompetence, complacency and cynicism".

The two officers being investigated by the RAF police are Air Commodore George Baber and Wing Commander Michael Eagles. They have not been suspended but Ainsworth told MPs that neither man currently held any safety-related position.

Baber led the integrated project team responsible for a safety review of RAF Nimrods from 2001-05. Haddon-Cave accused him of a "fundamental failure of leadership" in drawing up the "safety case". His performance "fell well below the standard that might be expected of someone in his position at the time". Haddon-Cave described Baber's "personal failure to take reasonable care" and "to make safety his first priority".

Eagles was criticised for failing to perform his role and exercise proper supervision in managing production of the Nimrod's safety review. He failed "to give adequate priority, care and personal attention to the … task. He failed properly to utilise the resources available to him within the Nimrod [project] to ensure the airworthiness of the Nimrod fleet."

Haddon-Cave's report said design flaws played a "crucial part" in the loss of the Nimrod, from the fitting in 1969 of the hot air piping whose design is believed to have caused the crash on 2 September 2006, to the fitting of air-to-air refuelling changes in 1989 which increased the risk of a fire. The report said BAE Systems "deliberately did not disclose to its customer the scale of the hazards". The new Military Aviation Authority would ensure that the MoD and its industry partners were operating to "the highest safety standards", Ainsworth said.

Haddon-Cave referred to severe financial pressures and "deep organisational trauma" within the MoD between 1998 and 2006. Ainsworth said today that there would be reforms to the "bureaucratic" way safety concerns were handled, and an audit of all current cases that would be completed "in the next couple of weeks". He also said he had a "personal commitment" to improving safety of military aviation and apologised "for the part my department played in failing to prevent [the Nimrod accident]".

Chugalug2

17th Dec 2009, 11:46

Orac:
Two senior RAF officers criticised in a devastating report into the crash of an Nimrod aircraft over Afghanistan with the loss of all 14 people on board are being investigated by military police, Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, said today
The senior officers that should be helping the RAFP with their enquiries come a lot lot more senior than these two scape goats. Let us hope that the RAFP, as a result of their enquiries, seek them out.

tucumseh

17th Dec 2009, 15:30

Quite right Chug. It is a pity H-C didn’t pursue that line when given their details.

Baber led the integrated project team responsible for a safety review of RAF Nimrods from 2001-05. Haddon-Cave accused him of a "fundamental failure of leadership" in drawing up the "safety case".

Throughout that period, and since 1991, it was MoD’s stated policy not to routinely maintain build standards, a fundamental pre-requisite to a valid Safety Case. As the Nimrod Whole Aircraft Safety Case is dependant on hundreds of individual Safety Cases, most of which the IPTL has no control over, the obvious thing to do is simply insert this as a risk in the Risk Register, and place ownership with his 2 Star to resolve the conflict. It is this “management oversight” which is sadly lacking, as stated by the HCDC when criticising MoD on Chinook Mk3, among others.

His performance "fell well below the standard that might be expected of someone in his position at the time". Haddon-Cave described Baber's "personal failure to take reasonable care" and "to make safety his first priority".

That he actually initiated a Safety Case task places him well above those who think it a waste of money. Various 2, 3 and 4 Stars are on record that functional safety is optional, and have been fully supported, in writing, by Ingram, Moonie, Caplin and Ainsworth. Specifically, a contract can be paid in full and an aircraft offered to the Service as airworthy, in the full knowledge that it is not functionally safe. THAT is a “personal failure” (and offence) of far greater magnitude, clearly illustrating that those above Air Cdre Baber gave no mind to making safety their first priority. Again, this puts him well above these Stars.

Similar applies to Wg Cdr Eagles. The same Stars are on record as withholding / refusing resources (money or staff) to manage safety/airworthiness/risk (and a host of other mandated activities) even when advised they are placing man and machine in danger. “You are standing into danger” was the term used in the advice to them. Navy types know what that means. (“You are a **** up and have royally ****** up”).

Right, does anyone have the address of the Senior Investigating Officer or boss of RAFP? I’m sure he’d be interested in a Ministerial briefing from MoD (to Ingram), stating (as a criticism) that I am the only MoD employee who thinks these and related regulations should be implemented properly. By definition, that statement condones the actions of those who don’t apply them properly and, especially, those who INSTRUCT lower ranks not to obey the regulations. The said officers may not have done their jobs properly, but against the prevailing background and ethos demonstrated from above, theirs is a relatively minor “offence”.

Tappers Dad

27th Apr 2010, 21:39

I make no apologies for posting this:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=115661521789621 (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=115661521789621)

Support For A Memorial For The Lost Nimrod Crew

After my Dad and 13 others were killed when their aircraft failed on them in Afghanistan on 2nd September 2006, you, the people of Forres, donated thousands of pounds into a fund for their memory. Our plans were to use this fund to create a memorial in the form of a cairn, to be placed in the town of Forres, somewhere everyone can see, pay their respects and remember our men. In trying to create this memorial to commemorate our 14 loved ones, we have come up against brickwall after brickwall! As a daughter of one of the men I am outraged and disgusted by the lack of support from prominent figures in the Forres Community. On behalf of the sons, daughters, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, family and friends who lost their loved one, I'm calling on you to show that you would support a memorial for Ady Davies, Allan Squires, Steve Swarbrick, Steve Johnson, Leigh Mitchelmore, Gareth Nicholas, Gary Andrews, Gerard Bell, Stephen Beattie, Benjamin Knight, John Langton, Gary Quilliam, Oliver Dicketts and Joseph Windall.
Suzanne Davies

1,498 members since last Sunday.

MATELO

28th Apr 2010, 07:39

I make no apologies for posting this:

And so you shouldn't.

Will be signing as soon as I can get access to facebook.

Vim_Fuego

28th Apr 2010, 08:08

Sadly I don't Facebook but it does have my full support...The lack of support from the local big-wigs comes as no surprise...They sniped away at us when I was up there...Who could forget the 'Drambusters' incident where the local ar$e of a councillor attempted to catch out a jet returning from France supposedly laden down with bootleg booze only to meet it and discover it was just carrying the usual 13 chunky crew?

VMD+12

28th Apr 2010, 14:02

Whilst I fully support the wish to have a memorial, I do not understand why the push is to have it in Forres. Surely it should be at Kinloss either on the Station or nearby. I think that only a relative few of those that tragically died actually lived in Forres and I wonder if it is this lack of a local link that is possibly making Forres reluctant to have the memorial in the town rather than at RAF Kinloss.

The memorials to others that have died in accidents are at RAF Kinloss such as the stunning stain glass window in the church with the 7 Maple Leafs to remember the crew who died in Toronto.

RandomBlah

28th Apr 2010, 20:49

I thought that a memorial had recently been created inside the main gate at Kinloss? If this is the case, then why the need for another memorial marking this tradgedy at a different location?

Duncan D'Sorderlee

28th Apr 2010, 21:02

The people of Forres have, since the Great War - and probably before - commemorated their dead - up to and including Gulf War 1. Follow the tragic event of 2 Sep 06, as Suzanne states, the people of Forres donated money for a memorial to the crew. Perhaps they should get it.

I have joined.

Duncs:ok:

TheSmiter

28th Apr 2010, 22:00

There is a memorial cairn close to the Findhorn Bridge on the A96 to the airmen from RAF Forres lost in WW2. At RAF Kinloss there are various memorials (plaques, stones, stained glass windows, and recently a copse planted close by the main entrance) commemorating those lost from the station over the years including XV230.

In an ideal world a public memorial to all the personnel lost from a particular station would be erected in the local town, and I would fully support this. Most British towns already have such a symbol to their fallen - usually called 'The War Memorial'. This doesn't seem to encompass those lost in peacetime, but at least a precedent has been set.

It would be helpful, TD, for those of us who don't 'do' Facebook, what the specific objections of the Moray Council are. Is it location or, more fundamentally, a problem with this particular memorial? I appreciate you didn't originate this Facebook Group, but you brought it to our notice.

As a Moray council tax payer, I would like to know why a memorial, funded by the public, cannot be erected in Forres.

VMD+12

29th Apr 2010, 08:27

This is how the on-line version of the Forres Gazette is reporting the issue:

A MEMORIAL for 14 RAF Kinloss servicemen killed when their Nimrod MR2 aircraft exploded over Afghanistan in 2006 was discussed at the meeting of Forres Community Council last Thursday.

advertising

Moray Council had contacted the community council and asked for its opinion on a site for the memorial proposed by the families of those killed in the crash, who included 12 servicemen based at RAF Kinloss.
The families have requested that the stone cairn memorial be erected beside the current war memorial on St Catherine's Road. The proposal would see it face onto the flower bed adjacent to the monument.
Secretary Colin Lipscomb said that the community council was being asked whether its members believed this site was suitable.
He said he believed it should be "turned 90 degrees" so that it faced onto the street. After the meeting, he told the 'Gazette' that this was so that it would be visible to people passing from St Catherine's Road.
"No-one wants to have to get out of their car to read what it says on a stone," he said.
Community councillor Stephen Ferris, an RAF serviceman who is also a local Scout leader, said he had concerns about the Remembrance Sunday parade, when war veterans and youth groups gather around the war memorial.
"We need to have enough room to march around the back," he said.
Mr Ferris suggested that the community council should consult the Forres branch of the Royal British Legion to address these concerns.
Legion secretary Eric Duguid said that they had been contacted about the proposal and would discuss the matter at their next meeting, due to take place at the end of this month.
Mr Lipscomb said he thought most community council members would support the proposed site.
But community councillor John MacKenzie said that the current war memorial, erected after the First World War, was "in a very special place", and added: "Five thousand men served, and 4,000 were killed, wounded or missing in action.
"Maybe this memorial ought to be somewhere else," he said.