Better late than never!
You think? Let me just try and work this out once more (I'm a little slow). £13 billion = 14 aircraft. Rough cost of a modded A330? Say £150 million - though I suspect much lower - gives a delta of £10.9 billion. Over 25 years = £436 million per year or £31 million per aircraft per year. And you give it back at the end. Is it me, or does this seem a little excessive? Do we need 14 A330s? Or do we need, say, half a dozen A310s NOW to replace (some of) the ageing AT fleet. Common platform across NATO (FR, DE, CA, BE) plus widely used commercially and only went out of production in 2005. Carries 200 pax, further than a VC10 and burns half the fuel. Must be about £15 million a pop? But then, I never was very good at maths...