Fishery / pollution / coast control with Nimrods, P3s is laughable and everybody knew. But proud guys had to hold on to the big glorious platforms, spanning the world seas.
This is so far off from reality it's laughable, you clearly haven't a clue what you are on about. Smaller aircraft could do these parts of the job, no doubt about it, but the part of the job that, for example, extended to 30W, or for the part of it that involved protection of our SSBNs, or for any one of a dozen other tasks that were regularly performed by Nimrod (and other NATO MPA) the bigger aircraft were needed. It's nothing to do with some sort of big boys toys rubbish. Operating radar, radio, electronic warfare, MAD and acoustics takes several bodies - real life is not like playing at it on the PC.
Dave