Originally Posted by
Asturias56
That makes sense - 9 aircraft is unlikely to be enough - and you KNOW they'll be diverted to all sorts of other things maritime
The initial number always had to be 9, just because that was the number of Nimrod MRA4s that they were prepared to accept. It would have been hard to convince the Treasury to fund more of an aircraft you were claiming was more capable than the one it was being procured instead of. The advantage of P-8 always was they COULD order more if they wanted to. There were never going to be more than 9 MRA4s