Calls To Save The Nimrod

[Garry Russell]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12117535

[DaveB]

The multimillion-pound project to replace Nimrod MRA4 surveillance and reconnaissance planes was ditched by David Cameron in October.

Have I read that wrong or is this Aunty Beeb at the cutting edge of reporting accuracy again?

ATB

DaveB

[Garry Russell]

I noticed that too.......

[Paul K]

Quote: Protesters have described the decision as the "greatest blunder in the history of the UK aircraft industry."

Oh, they have so many to choose from !

[DaveB]

Yes.. I think they should have qualified it by saying it was the greatest blunder in the history of the UK aircraft industry 'last year'.

ATB

DaveB

[Paul K]

Yep !

[Garry Russell]

It is reassuring to know the Britain is still a country steeped in tradition

No matter what the rest do the British always stick to their traditional way of doing thing

In this case they follow the tradition of cocking the whole thing up to the letter.....

They do still have a choice.........get this in service for what it can do and make some good of the effort and expense

Or dump it and look for something else to mess up..my money is on the latter

[Brian Franklin]

Anyone thinks this sounds familiar and smacks of a TSR-2 rerun.... Funny how it happens after Aunty Hilary comes over to talk with the new UK Government and the US is pushing it's new P-8 maritime venture.

Conspiracy.. what conspiracy

[SkippyBing]

This is the right decision about 10 years too late, heck I can remember when it was called Nimrod 2000.
I think the big mistake was in trying to refurbish 30+ year old airframes with all the problems that inevitably caused, when the same systems could have been put in either new build Nimrods or some Airbus variant. It might have required BAe to make some new jigs but that would have caused less problems than trying to fit CAD/CAM wings into airframes that had four inches of variation in the wing box area.

As for TSR.2, nothing like it. Nimrod MRA.4 posed no threat to the P-8s export potential as BAe only have a small number of potential donor airframes to use and compared to the 100+ P-8s the USN are getting a potential 9 sales to the UK are virtually irrelevant. Of course that's if you accept the argument that a few hundred TSR.2 sales were any threat to the several thousand F-111s GD were forecast to sell.

The main cause of the Nimrods downfall were BAes inability to meet the original fixed price contract and the RAFs determination to keep its Typhoon and Tornado fleet at the cost of anything else, such as the Sentinel spy planes that were comparatively on time to budget and are providing vital intelligence over Afghan. The earlier version being declared un-airworthy was just the final nail in the coffin.

[Garry Russell]

I agree Skippy and said so before on another thread.they should never have tried to develop it

However, they did and using it as it is is surely better than nothing at all

The British do try and stretch things out far to long without anything new to replace it so as each type goes down they shut up shop after winding down for years

The J41 was a huge mistake and the ATP was no more than an embarrassment.

The Hawk should have been replaced years ago and now they should be building something to replace the aircraft that would replaced the Hawk..............but nothing.