S41
1. Could have been done, but much reduced workload
2. Why pay £2Bn (£400m each) for what is a 30000te product carrier with a slightly different hullform and more accommodation at the stern. The Waves built nearly a decade ago cost £120M each which was bad enough - one should be looking at <<£100M per ship, built overseas to a UK design. More pertinently, tankers don't really need the high end of the skills market that warships do.
3. No. Detail design is not yet underway and therefore steel cannot possibly be cut before 2013-4 at the earliest. So it doesn't solve the problem.
I'm afraid bullying in action is not limited to BAE. The carriers were used as a carrot to get consolidation - the stick being the inordinate time that MoD delayed the order. Keeping design teams together costs lots of money to industry - they had already been disestablished once (~2003) I think when MoD delayed placing the early assessment phase contract for a year. BAE / Thales could not afford to maintain the teams, (when people leave, they don't generally come back) so six months and many £M wasted getting a new team up to speed.