The really sad thing about MRA4 is not jobs, or loss of capability, or reduction in industrial base; it is this, from the Haddon-Cave report on the loss of XV230:
But for the delays in the Nimrod replacement programme, XV230 would probably have no longer have been flying in September 2006, because it would have reached its Out-of-Service Date and already been scrapped, or stripped for conversion.
The report contains an eye opening section on the MRA4 procurement fiasco (and was written before the cancellation), and one thing that is very clear is that this report may have been a significant pointer towards cancellation:
In my view, these figures [average procurement delays 80%, average cost over-runs 40%, wasted money £900 million – £2.9 billion per year] are a matter of great concern. They give rise to the spectre of a further ‘bow wave’ of deferred financial problems which dwarfs anything faced in the late 1990s. My particular concern, for the purposes of this Report, is the knock-on effect which such a ‘bow wave’ might again have on the future integrity of safety and airworthiness in the MOD, in the event of further punishing rounds of stripping out or squeezing costs from In-Service Support and the concomitant change, confusion, dilution and distraction that this can bring, as in the past
MRA4 was a disaster of a project, and clearly those who make the decisions felt it was in danger of becoming a disaster in the worst sense of the word.
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