With (genuinely, it's not a polite way of calling you names) respect -
Liam Fox did not declare the MRA4 "potentially unsafe", it was the Project Team back in September.
I doubt I am the only ex Nimrod aircrew on here (sadly that now encompasses ALL RAF MPA aircrew) to wonder just how true this really is.
You can call virtually anything 'potentially' anything you like, I will require - but will probably never get - a great deal more detail before I accept what Liam Fox has said. Apart from anything else he is a politician, and wouldn't (ergo) recognise the truth if it bit him on the ar$e.
'Potentially unsafe' doesn't cut it, in my view, let's hear exactly what was still wrong and needed fixing, and how much time and money that would have taken - only then can a sensible decision be made on whether it was worth persevering or not. It is FAR too easy to blackguard a project after cancellation with half truths, smoke and mirrors, which (cynical as I am) is what I think is going on here.
If there were genuinely significant issues with MRA4 the cynic in me says we'd have heard the gory details by now - 'the wings fell off at 38,000 ft' for example is not something that LibCon would have kept quiet about... the fact that NO details are emerging about the supposed problems suggests that they were, in fact, not really a problem at all.
I remain quite open to persuasion otherwise, but my gut feeling is that the Nim 4 was cancelled at the point where it was very nearly ready for service, and that cancelling it was a decision based more on the bad name gained since 230 than any reasonable assessment of capability and cost.
Yes, BAEs should have their nuts kicked in for failing to turn out more airframes at lower price - 9 airframes was always a bit of a joke - but it's awful late to restart from scratch, and I suspect it wasn't needed.
For those with memories that exceed that of the goldfish, I am sure I am not the only person to fly on the Mk1 and 2 who heard 'this is the safest aircraft in the RAF, we should have lost x by now,....' when we still had to lose the first one. Flying as we did at very low level, in crappy weather, in winter, miles out over the oggin I am still amazed that we never lost one on a bog standard sortie - I am sure the crew of the Bahams Mama, and several other crews (including mine) sometimes thought the clock was running out, but the fact is that we have one lost kite (230) that we could put down to the aircraft failing us - chuck in an R1 off Lossie if you want to go outside maritime....now compare that to the hours flown, miles covered, lives saved, and (let us not forget) astronomical number of fishing boats logged....
Nimrod does not have a bad name, it had an excellent name for 30 years, sadly suffering from one bodge too many - and even that took over 20 years to bite us. Nimrod served the UK brilliantly, it was (arguably) let down by those who were supposed to oversee it, it did a hell of a lot to protect the UK and her allies over 4 decades - much of which will remain unknown to the general public. If only those charged with ensuring that it remained safe to fly had done their jobs then the MRA4 would be in squadron service today.
Dave