£3.8 billion for what appears to now be 8 platforms
CL - Where do you get the number 8 from? That's not what the 'centre' are working on.
How do you know what it's main role is? Are you that intimately involved in the programme?
If the MRA4 was available today, it would be employed as the MR2 currently is, ie in the ISTAR role. And to answer Len's point, the MR2 is being used in that role not because it's the best platform, but because it's the only platform! And if it's an ISTAR asset we want, we could spend about
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about 2% (yes 2%) of the unit cost per frame of the MRA4
If you an Len want to play semantics perhaps the ac (past, present and future) should be retitled. Perhaps we could have used MRASR2 and the MRRA4. Just because a designation is there, doesn't mean you have covered the totality of the roles. And I repeat what is capable of doing ISTAR for 2% of the cost? Just to confirm that is a platform capable of doing what the MR2 currently does, and will meet or exceed what the MRA 4 will be capable of, for £8M according to your (potentially flawed) calculations. And do we really want some single use platforms?