AA,
I think that the misunderstanding is on your side if you believe that H-C's criticisms of the RAF/MoD are only relevant to a specific Nimrod. If you have read it, you seem to have completely missed the point.
You would be similarly misguided if you believed that all of the problems exposed so well by H-C suddenly started after the 1998 Defence Review. The lack of airworthiness of the Chinook Mk2 in 1994 proves that. Thanks to H-C, we now know that nothing the MoD says about airworthiness and safety has any value whatsoever.