I understand the view put forward by Tourist who raises a good point. That said, just because one set of people are operating in a high-risk area does not mean that we should risk others. The Nimrod was placed in theatre to mitigate risk to ground troops. In doing that, the risk to others has increased alarmingly. I am not saying don't operate Nimrods at all, only that taskers should specifically identify the benefit of each mission. We currently operate approximately 18 Nimrods....2 on a good day !!! Should we not start to think about drastically cutting the fleet to say 6-8 aircraft and provide the engineers with the time and resources to keep the airframe in the best of conditions until the MRA4 enters service (and it will enter service). The current state of the MR2 fleet, at present, is a quite simply unfit for mission.