Originally Posted by
sprucemoose
To my mind this is a no-brainer. More than £3 billion has now been spent on the MRA4 project, so it can't be cancelled, and there are three good airframes sitting there that could very sensibly be converted as R1 replacements, ensuring fleet commonality where possible.
Only problem is they would have to go through a similar conversion process as XV249 did, as the underfloor panniers on the R are different to the bomb-bay on the MR/MRA - same external shape, but that's about all.