Originally Posted by
Asturias56
and they'd only cost £ 1Bn each I'd expect
Seriously tho - buying only 3 E-7's is as bad a case of penny wise pond foolish as I've ever seen.
I couldn't agree more but financial decisions on long lifetime acquisitions have always been driven by reaction to short term concerns where HMGs of both colours are concerned.
I believe a couple of used -700NGs could be obtainable for even less than that (but they don't appear to be as easily available as -800s) - wise heads would have bought a couple against a potential future requirement during COVID and stored them somewhere dry.
Does HMG own the P-8 engines or lease them like a civvie 737 operator?
The big cost is of course in installing 10 mission consoles, signal processing, EW and comms systems.