The Woeful Nimrod

Anyone shocked by the MOD spending £200 million to dispose of the cancelled Nimrod MRA4s needs to go read the Wikipedia page on them.

I already knew this was a project that was long past a joke but it doesn't make easy reading: the project was £789 million over budget and nine years late already.  The aircraft were coming in at £400 million each (a third of the cost of a Space Shuttle) and this bid won because they re-used the fuselage from earlier aircraft and basically bolted on new wings and engines to supposedly save money.

It has long been a question of how BAE won it when we could have gone out and bought a better platform for less money.  The Nimrod has long had a patchy service record with calls for it to be retired, they date back to the 1960s and were last upgraded in the 1970s.  It's an aircraft that should have been scrapped a long time ago and most flyers won't miss it.  Only BAE will miss milking the money from it.