A projective geometry is an equivalence class of torsion free connections sharing
the same unparametrised geodesics; this is a basic structure for understanding physical
systems. Metric projective geometry is concerned with the interaction of projective and
pseudo-Riemannian geometry. We show that the BGG machinery of projective geometry combines
with structures known as Yang-Mills detour complexes to produce a general tool for
generating invariant pseudo-Riemannian gauge theories. This produces (detour) complexes of
differential operators corresponding to gauge invariances and dynamics. We show, as an
application, that curved versions of these sequences give geometric characterizations of
the obstructions to propagation of higher spins in Einstein spaces. Further, we show that
projective BGG detour complexes generate both gauge invariances and gauge invariant
constraint systems for partially massless models: the input for this machinery is a
projectively invariant gauge operator corresponding to the first operator of a certain BGG
sequence. We also connect this technology to the log-radial reduction method and extend the
latter to Einstein backgrounds.