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!
That's actually quite difficult to prove one way or the other.
New Nimrod airframes...only if the jigs and machine tools and plans were still intact and available. There was talk of getting rid of them in the mid 80s, but I don't know what actually happened.
New P3? One of the plans was to reverse engineer a P3. Utterly bizarre! Another to take redundant P3 airframes; not sure how this would in truth be better than old Nimrods.
It's not a clear cut argument. Pros and cons each way.