primary flight reference data displays.......being derived from Airbus.
But clearly not all that code was developed just for those 12 Nimrods, even if the UK taxpayer is being charged as though it was.
Bear in mind my point was only being made in big handfuls and I don't doubt that the reuse / adaptation of existing airbus flight deck solutions reduced some of the costs of starting from scratch. However - nothing safety critical is ever cheap as you must always re anaylse the application of existing implementations in new platforms to ensure you understand the relevant risks and failure modes. The Ariane 5 project team learned this the hard way when they took Ariane 4 INS kit "off the shelf" and applied it "on the cheap".