You heard it here first
Come on folks - the reason for the senior outburst now is clear - this is capitalising on the emotional reaction of seeing beautiful jets being shredded to fire the first shots of the 'Buy us some P8s soon' campaign.
And dont worry airborne boys and girls, the P8s will be exactly to spec (as the spec will be 'I want one of those'), exactly on time, and very very cheap to buy and operate, being from the good ol US of A from where everything that flies is perfect.
(By the way, despite some touchiness above - those pictures and some of the allegations are hard to take from my side of the table - I do believe that if the RAF does get some, within a couple of years the performance will knock the spots off anything that the Yanks can deliver, given my experience of the UK maritime community)