Now I may be as thick as a thick thing, but could somebody please explain to me how stopping the MR2 early saves £100 million - not that I'm saying it doesn't....
Apart from not burning the fuel, the following points need to be considered:
Kinloss is not closing - so no great saving in base running costs.
No RAF personnel are being made redundant, so no saving in the wage bill.
Most civil support contracts were probably in place to support the aircraft until Mar 2011, so breaking them early will probably invoke penalty clauses and produce little or no savings.
Most (all?) of the work been carried out to make the aircraft ALARP has already been done.
The Nimrod IPT's budget for MR2 was much less than £100 million.
All of the above comments are my own interpretation of the situation, and may be incorrect. However, if I am not way off the mark, where has this £100 million saving come from? Hopefully anyone who knows and is willing/able to expand will answer this question which is asked out of curiousity and in good faith...
I'm not after ...."if we didn't cut the MR2 where else would we save money".. or "the MR2 wasn't contributing anything".... type responses thank you.