@ Squirrel 41
Yes indeed it does, thanks ...
Another thought about BAES - when the company went for initials and added "S" for Systems, it was, at least partly, becasue by then hardware (like airframes) was for them no longer the things to be in (and who can blame them?). Also, I saw recently that BAES actually earns more from the US DoD through its US offshoots, to the extent that I wondered if it shouldn't change to a more mid-Atlantic name and forget the "British" bit - but maybe it has privately already done so ...
Back to Nimrod: Another report had it that the aircraft's electronic task-fit was no longer up to much, given that it took no (or little) account of technological advances in electronics during the elephantine gestation time. This could have been one of those "whispers" I referred to in my earlier post (like the one about the TSR2's wing breaking on test -which it was meant to, but the whisperer in the PM's ear didn't mention that).