I have a nice anecdote from the German air force that might be relevant to the thread and of (humorous) interest.

There were (are?) those exercises in which wings demonstrate their readiness to NATO. Foreign officers come to the base and observe, give grades.

Flight safety cannot be "excellent" if you have no backup radar for your tower.

Well, what do you do if u have no backup radar, never had one?

You 'organise' some obscure radar from the 60's on a trailer, set it up, plug in the cables safely and show it off.

Now what I heard about this backup radar is that it was
a) not working (and didn't for decades)
b) not legal to use because of excessive radiation
c) quite useless for the purpose (even if it worked)
d) the only one in the Luftwaffe, thus shipped to every wing that has its inspection only to be showed off as backup radar at another wing a few weeks later.


All attempts to institutionalize or fashion-ize "excellence" are stupid in my opinion.