Thursday 27 January 2011

Nimrod scrapping

A perverse example of how not to cut the budget.

2 comments:

eon said...

"They are unnecessary because there are no Soviet submarines threatening Britain any more."

-channeling the decision-makers at Whitehall.

So, who cares about jihadis, or even pirates?

Of course, they would never cut their precious "social (vote-buying) programs", and since the Sixties in "Cool Brittania" it has always been fashionable to stick it to the military. Especially the RAF. Anything can be White Papered to death, by the "wise heads'" reckoning. (And it feels so good to do it, according to them.)

I'm somehow reminded of the Canadian Avro CF-105 Arrow, which ended with a Labour- certified crane guillotining the prototypes to shouts of glee from the PM. A few years later, of course, Mikoyan-Gurevich came up with the suspiciously Arrow-like Foxbat.

I'm wondering when the new, improved Russian Air Force will show up with suspiciously Nimrod-like maritime patrol aircraft.

cheers (not)

eon

Wunderbear said...

I thought that the Nimrods were an overly-expensive, difficult alternative to just buying a system from the Americans? That there was a whole load of faff about refurbishing the old airframes which ended up costing a load more than a new fleet of aircraft.

*reads* Oh, I see. The scrapping is at even more expense, right after we've spent all that money building and equipping the damn things.

ARRSEpedia (the ARmy Rumour SErvice) has a very good article on it.