All this banter about 2 engines and 4 engines sounds so familiar when I think back to when the contract was being put out to tender.
In the meantime, we are about to get..................nothing, and be without a maritime patrol fleet.
Doesn't this say anything about sensible pragmatism and living in the real world, and doesn't anyone think that we could have had a fleet of Atlantique IIs in service years ago (probably for half of the money which we have already spent!), which would probably have survived the cuts?