All RTSs are viewable on the RAF Fixed Wing RTS MoD intranet web site, including Airseeker.

intrAnet
 

I figure JIV was looking to see the RTS in the Public Domain.


Interestingly when I did a bit of work on the Chinook in 2010 the classified insert for the RTS including the SOP was openly published on the www for all to see. if you knew where to look and the DRTSA (RW) team pointed you in the direction you could find it. I just tried now and it has disappeared. In my little bit of the FW domain we used to distribute numbered hard copies. Not that good at Google but whilst searching I came across the link to Desider (The DE&S House rag) from Nov 2010. An article full of aspirations and some good pictures of RJ and also the R over Lincoln.


https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...1_Dec_2010.pdf

That's very interesting. It should include full details of the waiver. I wonder if, with the passage of time and loss of corporate knowledge, the regs governing RTSs are no longer regarded as mandated. Or perhaps there are very few left who would recognise a non-compliant one?

Certainly, when the complete Chinook RTS from 1993/4 was eventually obtained in 2011 it didn't seem to cross MoD's mind that, because it was around 95% non-compliant, it was rather handing the case on a plate to campaigners. (For those who haven't read the evidence, the RTS described an aircraft with little or no avionics, that was not permitted to fly). Similarly, for example, the Sea King ASaC one in 2003, which was more akin to an AEW Mk2 from about 1985 and certainly positively dangerous in places (to coin a phrase) if applied to a Mk7. The reason I use these examples is that both had "Interim" releases initially (Chinook until 1996 and ASaC until late 2002), which by definition means some or all of the aircraft could "not be relied upon in any way" - and Rivet Joint is the same.

So the real question is what does the "interim" caveat relate to - noting MoD still stand by their evidence from 1995 that there is no such thing as an "interim release"! Again, see ZD576 evidence. This is where you get the clues about the sheer scale of confusion in MoD. One department still stands by this policy, and another (MAA) knowingly contradicts it; yet no attempt is made to deconflict. It smacks of making these things up as they go along, which is why you have mandated regs.

The regulation that covers an RTS is here:


http://www.maa.mod.uk/linkedfiles/re...ies/ra1300.pdf

I think if I were still in MoD, and still had airworthiness delegation, I'd exercise my "engineering judgement" obligation and ignore this in favour of Controller Aircraft Instructions (which were mandated in every aircraft related project or programme). There is far too much that is now optional that used to be mandated. This leads to confusion.

The obvious one is that everyone (presumably!) prefers a positive statement of clearance, not an implied clearance. A less obvious and rather obscure one is the omission of the concept of an Aircrew Equipment Assembly also being a part of the avionic system (an LRU), with a certain build standard mandated along with complementary aircraft modification(s) and Full Fleet Fit. That is, safety is affected if the wrong AEA or a mixture of build standards is present in the aircraft. As I said, obscure (or it was in 1996 when first implemented), but failure to comply explained one of the contributory factors in a multi-fatality crash a few years ago; so you'd expect the MAA to take steps to avoid recurrence. Apologies, of course, if it is buried in another MAA document; but it should be an RTS issue.

AW&ST: (Behind their firewall) U.K. Rivet Joint Finally Flies

The U.K. Royal Air Force has finally begun training sorties with its first RC-135 Rivet Joint intelligence-gathering aircraft, seven months after it was delivered. The first flight with a British crew in late May was seen as a significant step forward for the $1 billion Airseeker program, an L-3 Communications conversion of three 1960s-vintage U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotankers into RC-135W signals intelligence-gathering aircraft, and the U.K.’s admittance into the U.S. Rivet Joint intelligence-gathering structure.

But the type’s introduction to flight operations has not been straightforward. Since its arrival at its home base of RAF Waddington, England, last November, the aircraft had not moved from its parking spot. Its entry into service was complicated by the changes in air safety governance and the regime of safety case and certification oversight introduced through the creation of the Military Aviation Authority (MAA), which was formed in April 2010 following the Haddon-Cave inquiry into the loss of an RAF Nimrod patrol aircraft over Afghanistan in 2006.

As a type new to the inventory, the Rivet Joint would have normally been taken through a six-part Military Aircraft Certification Process (MACP) to receive its release to service documentation that would clear it for flights by U.K. aircrews. But the lack of paperwork and documentation stretching back to when the aircraft was first built as a KC-135A Stratotanker meant that officials were not able to fulfill two elements of the MACP process: They could not establish and agree the Type Certification Basis (TCB) nor demonstrate the aircraft’s compliance with the TCB. That forced the U.K.’s procurement agency, Defense Equipment and Support (DE&S), to undertake a wide-scale examination of the aircraft, carry out structural and zonal analysis and complete audits to generate evidence and prove the aircraft’s safety. The MAA was brought in to examine DE&S’s work and give its own recommendations.

“We couldn’t follow our own regulation, . . . so what we elected to do is follow an alternative, an as-safe route that . . . demonstrates the requisite levels of safety have been achieved,” Air Marshal Richard Garwood, director general of the MAA, tells Aviation Week. “Because it couldn’t follow the six-part process, we got permission from the secretary of state to take a different course of action, an alternative approach,” Garwood notes. “We haven’t changed the rules, but we couldn’t apply our own either. Two of the six bases required for certification didn’t exist or compliance could not be proved. If you don’t have that, in order to make sure this is safe, you’ve got to—not reverse engineer, but collect that evidence by different methods such as zonal analysis and work backward.”

In the U.S., the Rivet Joint has essentially been given grandfather rights, so DE&S officials had little evidence to indicate how the U.S. flight-envelope clearances were obtained. The MAA and U.S. armed services are collaborating to understand one another’s certification practices. The MAA and U.S. Army completed their work last December with the signing of a mutual recognition certificate between the British authority and the Army’s Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center. Work with Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) is proceeding and expected to finish this year, while work with Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) is being conducted this year. MAA officials say that even if the AFMC recognition had been in place, it would not have been a “silver bullet.” Similar projects are underway with several military certification agencies in Europe as well. The MAA submitted its findings to the assistant chief of the Air Staff on April 23. He issued an initial release to service for the Rivet Joint on April 30, but technical issues with ground equipment delayed until May 23 plans to get the aircraft flying. A full release to service will be awarded at a later date.

The RAF is the first export customer for the Rivet Joint, which is considered to be one of the most complex Foreign Military Sales transactions ever completed between the U.S. and U.K. The RAF is due to declare an initial operating capability with a single RC-135 this October. New aircraft will then be delivered every two years, with a full operating capability expected in mid-2017.

So is the UK MAA DG essentially saying that RJ does not even accord with current US Airworthiness Regulation, never mind the UK's? If that is so, doesn't that weaken the case for this restricted RTS rather than explain it?

So once again the UK Military has been given a knowingly unairworthy aircraft to fly, a fact that has been known of since the inception of this project. I suppose one could say it will be in good company then, but wasn't the Haddon-Cave Report and its love child, the MAA, supposed to stop all that? No? Oh, how silly of me to forget that their purpose is to protect VSO's, not the poor sods in the aircraft.

Talking of silver bullets, perhaps the present DG might be minded to hand his predecessor a gun loaded with one, and then leave him alone with it....

Or, we could just man up and fly the thing and accept that there is a risk that it might fall out of the sky occasionally due to unknown problems. We are the military after all.

Soldiers walk on untested terrain, sailors go out in storms and frankly sh1t happens.

Tourist, once again you demonstrate you don't know the difference between airworthiness and fitness for purpose, or airworthiness and serviceability. Your reply has nothing whatsoever to do with previous posts.

I scan read that as ass-safe, as in covering.

Such a laissez faire attitude towards procurement has worked out so well for the British Army and the Royal Navy.

Perhaps non-IED proof vehicles being used in IED strewn parts of the world and ships made from highly flammable materials aren't the the greatest examples of military procurement.

No he doesn't Dervish. I flew an aircraft for many years that apparently wasn't "airworthy". Did I worry about it? No, as far as we were concerned it wasn't unairworthy; it may have been unserviceable quite a lot of the time but we were all quire happy to fly it. We have an aircraft here that has flown for many years quite successfully. The "evidence" that is required today simply doesn't exist, so someone has to make a judgement, and that judgement based on 40 or 50 years of flying is it is OK. It might not meet the current standards, but then it is a 40/50 year old design. I have absolutely no doubt that today's 787s/A350s will not meet acceptable airworthiness standards in 40 or 50 years time, or that an unforseen fault despite all of the safety cases in the world will cause one to crash, but that is not going to stop me going on holiday on one this year.

THS

Your examples are a little extreme and somewhat naive. It deosn't really matter what you do with military equipment, someone is going to find a way of defeating you. You might just as well have chosen the example of the 62 ton Challenger - significant armour didn't save that either. I also know quite a few army personnel who thought that Snatch was the best vehicle for patrolling many of the narrow streets in towns and villages in Iraq.

I think its more indicative that the MACP cannot cover each and every Type that the MAA through the six-stage process.

The design is pretty specialist and whilst we are short of the capability, I dare say some level of risk acceptance (fully endorsed by our Lords and masters it seems with legal repercussions) is necessary, otherwise nothing will get done.

The point is, there IS accountability and risk acceptance, which is the big difference in my view between pre and post haddon cave.

THS

I would rather go to war and kick ass in some ships that had problems than sit at home like wusses in no ships at all.

You notice that we won that conflict, yes?

"We couldn't follow our own regulation".

In that case, Head of the MAA, what is the point of your organisation?:ugh:

The fact you are discussing an aircraft after it has been released to service proves his point. Also, in the same sentence you discuss airworthiness and serviceability when they are two different things. The former facilitates the latter. An aircraft can be unserviceable but still airworthy. In fact, many would say that is the norm!

With respect, you and Tourist need to accept that one first attains, then maintains, airworthiness. And Fitness for Purpose, for all practical purposes, becomes a consideration only after the former. That is, much of what goes on is, and should be, invisible to you (front line). The whole thread is about what has happened before the release. It is being discussed here because the failures have been made public. Had the regulations been followed, this thread wouldn't exist. This "attaining airworthiness" is the phase Rivet Joint is in, and it has failed miserably because it has been known for years the problems exist, but (seemingly) something has only been done after the MAA (rightly) dug their heels in and refused to countenance the RJ project team's refusal to correct their mistakes and heed the audit. I'm being polite here because, as Chug says, the new MAA DG has been handed a poisoned chalice. He should be banging tables asking why the audit was ignored. The huge problems MoD are admitting is in many ways a smokescreen, hiding even bigger ones. That is, the consistent, flat refsual of many staffs to meet legal obligations, while being protected by VSOs and Ministers.


You were right to assume your aircraft was airworthy, because it had been released and you had to assume higher ups had done their jobs properly. The MAA exists because it is now ACKNOWLEDGED these higher ups didn't do their jobs. It was KNOWN they did not do their jobs over 20 years ago.


What I'd like to know is why no action was taken at the time (3 years ago in the case of RJ), especially given the history (e.g. Nimrod MRA4) of certain key staffs. When people have let you down to the tune of £4Bn+, why on earth keep them in the same job and allow them to retain delegation? I sincerely hope that is what is keeping MAA DG busy, not the simple task of getting an RTS.



I think THS makes a valid point. Much of this is about proper setting of Requirements and management of Configuration Milestones. Both are widely regarded as a waste of money by those he mentions with the laissez faire attitude. For example, again, by the same individuals responsible for Nimrod.

Oh that makes deaths that were arguably increased due to cost cutting and going against well-established naval practices ok then?

Well it doesn't actually prove his point at all. The aircraft was the Nimrod, just because someone says, years after the fact, that an aircraft isn't airworthy doesn't mean it is so. Things move on, regulation changes, design tolerances change. I'm afraid 10s if not hundreds of thousands of flying hours suggest the aircraft was more than airworthy.

Thank you for pointing out that serviceability and airworthy are different, I'll say this once more - I KNOW! You and others need to accept that your views are different to ours. Some of us are prepared to accept that there is a risk in flying, that the evidence from another nation with 1000s of hours on type is sufficient. That your desire for 100% airworthiness, laudable though that is, would mean that NOTHING would EVER fly. You will never create a safety case that will cover every eventuality, it's just not possible.

It's pointless debating this any further with those not prepared to see a different viewpoint so I will leave this and all other airworthiness debates to a select few. I just hope the guys and girls on the RJ are enjoying flying the RAF version of the aircraft they have been flying on with the USAF for a few years. I'm off.

To be fair the people banging on have at least a partial point

Why do we have a system that is going to allow the RJ's to enter service when it's clear they aren't following the current rule book?

the answer is, of course, that the current rules were put in place as a response to another situation. No-one thought it through properly (this IS the MoD gentlemen) and now we are caught in a dilemma of our own making

Rather than confess they'll do it on the sly and it may (I hope not) come and bite them in the bum in the future

I think we've said all that needs to be said on this TBH - no-one is going to have any effect and no-one on hear will shift their position