JIV - Maaybe something to do with the fall-out from this ?

http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...bishkek-5.html

LFH

From Flight Global today:



The UK Military Aviation Authority (MAA) expects to within weeks reach a decision on the airworthiness of the Royal Air Force’s RC-135W Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft, which should be introduced operationally from later this year.

US company L-3 Communications is modifying three 1964-vintage KC-135R tankers to the Rivet Joint signals intelligence-gathering configuration for the RAF, with the first having been delivered to its Waddington air base in Lincolnshire last November. The aircraft has not been flown again since its arrival, as certification activities continue.

“We’ve been given some big boxes of paperwork, and our team will take 20 working days to assess Airseeker and the release to service recommendation,” says Air Marshal Dick Garwood, director general of the MAA. “Then we will tell ACAS [the assistant chief of the air staff] what we think about this aeroplane: is it safe, or is it not.”

wow - some plain speak there - makes a change from the usual business buzzword waffle - well done!

Surely even the MOD haven't spent millions on a 'new' RAF type, to have it grounded after delivery!!

"Surely even the MOD haven't spent millions on a 'new' RAF type, to have it grounded after delivery!!"


The RAF/MOD has had big issues with air worthiness over the last few years and has been pilloried from many sources over its lack of ensuring the safety of the people who fly the aircraft. Unless the aircraft is proved to be safe and fit for purpose then it will not fly... You cannot have it both ways.

I think the point cessnapete, and indeed most taxpayers, was trying to make is something along the lines of....

".... wouldn't it have been a good idea for the MAA to have done its homework, and be pretty sure it would be able to recommend release, before the UK actually purchased the aircraft?...."

From the outside, it looks like a ridiculous situation where the MOD has bought an aircraft that it could subsequently deem unfit to fly in service use.



As someone not particularly in the loop on this issue, it may just be an issue of timescales, maybe the RJ was ordered before the MAA came into fruition, or rules for the recommendation for release changed after the order for RJ was placed?

Perhaps someone more enlightened on this issue can, politely, provide some more insight?

IIRC the original plan to buy RJ was announced (to 51 Squadron at least*) during ACM Torpy's tenure as CAS, so predates the formation of the MAA by a year or so.

* It's on here somewhere

D68,

Thanks for the input!!



One could also ask....

".... why didn't the MAA look through these 'big boxes of paperwork' prior to the aircraft arriving in the UK?...."


I presume the 'paperwork' was readily available from the manufacturer at any stage, since it is not a 'new' product.

No doubt in this case it's probably all about the number of properly qualified MAA personnel available for the task and their current workload and priorities. But I must say, from the outside it doesn't look slick from a PR point of view. If the NHS built a brand new hospital that then stood empty for several months I'm sure the press would have a field day!

Only if they knew about it, this is allegedly based on a true story

Ah, therein lies the rub - it is a new product - one of a kind - a sort of bespoke conversion of a particular airframe.

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't being precise enough in my use of English.


I meant that it wasn't (presumably?) a 'new' product to L-3 Communications, as opposed to the RAF, for which it is definitely a new aircraft type.

I therefore thought that, as the firm doing what was for them (presumably) a 'standard conversion', L-3 Communications would have the "big boxes of paperwork" available for the MAA to read whenever they wanted to.

Hopefully that clarifies my previous comment!

But it is a new product in that the starting baseline aircraft will almost certainly be unlike any other used for conversion in terms of hours, mod standard, etc etc. And the next airframe will also start from a different baseline. And will there really be a paper trail going back some 50 years?

Am I reading into this thread that the MAA will have to do three complete reviews of the paperwork as all three base aircraft are slightly different?

This I think it brings the concept of the MAA recommending approval for the F35B as an audited as proven safe aircraft into question.

With the different branches of the US military deciding to declare IOC with different versions of the hardware and software, does the MAA have the resources to audit the software releases etc or can the MOD rely on US approval? It would seem not from the Rivet Joint experience.

S Spey,

Thanks for the informative reply!

Looks like it could be a can of worms...

"With the different branches of the US military deciding to declare IOC with different versions of the hardware and software, does the MAA have the resources to audit the software releases etc or can the MOD rely on US approval? It would seem not from the Rivet Joint experience".


It shows that the decision to reduce the DES from 25,000 to 5,000 and make Civil Servants redundant was a little silly (as predicted back in 2010 when I finally left).

At the risk of wading in where there are many ingrained opinions at play - I don't believe that it was ultimately the MAA's decision to order Rivet Joint, so a bit much to blame them if it's found unsafe.

And a clarification from the original article - the large boxes of paperwork are not from L-3, they are from DE&S, so no, this couldn't have been done previously.

The MAA cannot certify Airseeker as the original Boeing certification evidence no longer exists, and that's assuming it existed in the first place. The creation of the MAA raised the airworthiness bar leaving Airseeker unable to meet the new criteria for service entry.

The bar hasn't been raised. It is just that PTs and ACAS are now required to clear it, whereas under previous regimes they were allowed to make false declarations that they had cleared it, knowing that they had not. See Chinook ZD576, Tornado ZG710, Nimrod XV230, Hawk XX177 etc etc. If Airseeker can't clear the bar, then that would be because the PT hasn't set its sights high enough in the first place. Same as Nimrod MRA4.

I agree with the sentient expressed above -re MAA and the boxes of evidence. They should have been working alongside the PT for the last 4 years to ensure that nothing came as a surprise when the recommendations were drafted for ACAS. However, the MAA DG's comments imply this hasn't happened. Their jobs are to avoid the avoidable, and manage the unavoidable. The boxes he speaks of should be the latter.

As Wensleydale said, in so many words, it is unlikely the MoD has sufficient people of junior enough grade to do the work. All this should be basic stuff to the most junior CS in DE&S. Few, if any, at this grade work in the MAA, which says it all.

Is the process about to be undertaken by the MAA likely to be credible, or is it potentially just a case of smoke and mirrors?

On the one hand, given its track record in this area, the MOD wants to be seen to be doing things correctly, hence considerable open publicity on this matter. The MOD wants to be able to say that they have done it thoroughly and correctly.

On the other hand, given some comments here about the possible lack of historic evidence, if the case for recommendation is not proven, will the MAA have the gonads to say so, thus creating a massive white elephant, or will the political pressure to recommend release be overwhelming?



Please note, I am not deliberately trying to call into question the integrity of any individual involved in this process, and I apologize if anyone feels that to be the case. However, if the MAA were a truly independent body, as many on here have asked for, there might be more faith placed in any of its decisions.

Excellent questions Biggus.

The political pressure (both internal MoD and from Government) will be immense. We know this pressure often prevails over common sense and regulations. Chinook HC Mk2 for example. Nimrod was scrapped because it could never be certified and it would be slightly embarrassing for a replacement for a Nimrod variant to go the same way. The fact MoD have admitted "challenges" merely illustrates their utter failure to learn lessons over the last 20-odd years. The ludicrous Wg Cdr Spry thread here on pprune encapsulates the problem. The Flight Safety organisation can't get basic definitions right, even when MoD regulations get them spot on.

-re historical evidence. The rules governing technical and financial approval require this issue to be squared away under, at worst, a risk reduction programme, long before any development or production contract is let. Lack of such evidence has been regarded as a standing risk on all aircraft and equipment programmes since the Chief Engineer created the risk in 1991 (by issuing directives that savings should be made at the expense of safety). All aircraft PTs know it must be mitigated up front. I'd bet my house this has been largely ignored, in part because it is a career killer to implement this legal obligation and discover a problem. Nimrod MRA4 again.

Additionally, and as stated before, one cannot simply buy an aircraft, especially the avionics suite, "off the shelf" from the US. Our Home Office dictate certain parts of the specification which the US don't even know about (and they don't tell us of their equivalent). If the project has been planned assuming the aircraft will just be delivered and flown immediately, then some rather significant parts of the build standard and clearance process have been ignored entirely. Again, mandated risk reduction stuff on Day 1.

Another problem, as discussed above, is a distinct lack of corporate knowledge, not unrelated to the horrendous uncertainty anyone working in DE&S faces at the moment.

I think it will enter service, but the operational constraints and limitations may mean in some respects it is a dumbed down version of the R. Or perhaps the long delay means MoD are beavering away getting it up to spec.