or put another way .....
Question
What the hell sort of country builds a fleet of aircraft for £4bn then scraps them because some damn politicians decides we don't have the money to run them!
Answer
Probably the same people who have to work day to day with a bunch of service personnel who think the taxpayer is a bottomless pit for their decades late, billions over budget glory projects ?
1. the aircraft has yet to fly effectively - its removal is not creating a gap, its failing to fill one which the service appears to be quite happy having for the last decade while ir prevaricates and messes around.
2. It was a project based upon reuse of failed bits, adding more unproven bits and generally wasting billions by building upon failure after failure. By scrapping it fully, we prevent the future creation of the next failure, the Nimrod 5 which would the RAF's next late project.
3. the RAF should look to itself for the failure. If they had delivered to time and budget and not kept messing around, they would have had their toys by now. Its difficult to justify billions and billions of overspend money being wasted to keep Nimrod going when history suggest that the RAF cannot be trusted to get the project off the ground. Meanwhile soldiers on the ground are dying due to lack of appropriate vehicles. Which do you spend money on - vehicles which will clearly save lives, or spend it on more delays on Nimrod. Its a no brainer.
Sorry RAF chaps, we taxpayers are now holding you to account and are taking away the chequebook. Like a naughty child who gorges himself on sweets until sick, you are going on a diet and are going to have to live within our means. That means you don't get 100% of your desired capability for an extra 10 years delay and billions over budget. Learn to live within your means.