Originally Posted by
RileyDove
It's far cheaper to build brand new airframes and tailor them to your requirements rather than 'cut and shut' some old Nim's that have been around a bit! I guess Boeing being involved in this escapade are now well aware of the pitfalls!
Two different aspects here.
The Nimrods were manufactured to the best standards and practices of their day - erm... circa 1965-70 - which means they were cut with knives and forks and slammed together with hammers and chisels, if judged by modern standards. BAE had forgotten this, and so didn't know that they had in fact got a bespoke fleet of aircraft, every one of which was a unique airframe. So the 'standard' wing produced to best standards and practices circa 2000, simply didn't fit. Lots of re-engineering, cost.....
The second aspect is that the mission system (seriously complex one at that!), in the early days at least, had a lot of the software designed by Boeing, much of it taken from, I believe, the maritime 737. Boeing are as good or as bad at writing software as any other big systems house; indeed I'd say on balance, probably better than most. But they are far from flawless and since it's utterly impossible to write error free software, and that the software delivered/developed would have needed integration with new code....boy, is that a big and tricky job! Mike's rule of thumb: 2-5% code change is manageable; 5-10% is a major change; more than 10% means it might be cheaper to rewrite the entire code from scratch than try and adapt that in place. Now is that a cost driver waiting to happen or what!
and then there have been other problems too....It's no easy job and to be frank, for whatever reasons the aircraft was chosen and however high the hurdles, we shouldn't contemplate ever again a fiasco the likes of the Nimrod AEW/E-3D. It's better to stick at it.