Sunday Times article.
Nimrods had ‘critical fault’
Simon McGee
THE nine Nimrod aircraft cancelled amid a storm of condemnation and at a cost of £4 billion were designed with the same critical safety fault blamed for the downing of an RAF Nimrod in 2006 with the loss of 14 lives.
Liam Fox, the defence secretary, has been accused of leaving a “massive gap” in the nation’s security by scrapping the fleet of maritime patrol planes.
But classified documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal Ministry of Defence (MoD) safety tests conducted last year on the first Nimrod MRA4, built by BAE Systems, found “several hundred design non-compliances”.
Among them were problems opening and closing the bomb bay doors, failures of the landing gear to deploy, overheating engines and gaps in the engine walls, limitations operating in icy conditions, and concerns that “a single bird-strike” could disable the aircraft’s controls.
However, the most serious problem discovered by Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) inspectors at MoD Abbey Wood in Bristol involved a stillunresolved design flaw. It concerns the proximity of a hot air pipe to an uninsulated fuel line, widely blamed for an explosion on board Nimrod XV230 on September 2, 2006, near Kandahar airport in Afghanistan. A three-page summary of the faults, labelled “restricted” and written on September 17, last year, stated: “The work being undertaken by the MoD to validate the BAE Systems aircraft’s safety case during the week of September 13, 2010, identified a potentially serious design defect: a small section of a hot air pipe was discovered to be uninsulated in an area that also contains fuel pipes, which is outside the design regulations.”
It added: “Parallels could be drawn between this design defect and that which is thought to have caused the loss of the Nimrod MR2 (XV230) in Afghanistan in September 2006 resulting in the death of 14 personnel.”
The revelations support Fox’s claim that the aircraft simply was not airworthy. The Nimrod is designed as a maritime aircraft capable of roles including submarine detection and warfare, and long-range sea rescue.
But the DE&S report found the ability of the new MRA4 aircraft to drop sonar buoys, depth charges or life rafts would be seriously hampered: “The aircraft will enter service with a restriction preventing the opening of the bomb bay doors and a longer term solution has yet to be found.”
It added: “A single bird-strike has a potential to cause it critical damage, which could disable primary aileron flight control to both wings.” The first “few flights” of the first Nimrod saw it failing to deploy its nose landing gear “due to incorrect tolerance design”. Inspectors also found the Nimrod had “severe limitations for operating in icing [sic] conditions”, without going into detail, and said there were unresolved problems with “wing fatigue”.
They also highlighted overheating in the engine bay, and gaps in the engine bay firewalls that BAE Systems had claimed did not exist: “BAES had previously produced a report that incorrectly stated that these had been inspected and met design and build standards.”
The MoD report concluded: “MRA4 carries in total several hundred design non-compliances. Whilst many of these relate to legacy design and necessary design constraints, a significant number (including some of the issues listed above) are not what we would expect to find in a well-designed aircraft.”
Last night, a defence source said: “The project has been a disaster and should have been cancelled years ago.
“There were clearly serious safety concerns about the aircraft, and it is incredible that the flaw that saw 14 people killed near Kandahar was repeated in this new Nimrod. It would cost another £1 billion to fix all these problems, but there comes a point where you just have to say enough is enough.”
BAE Systems said: “At the time of the cancellation of the MRA4 programme, we were working with the Ministry of Defence — in the normal way — to resolve a number of issues relating to the aircraft.
“We are confident that these would have been resolved to enable the aircraft’s entry into service as planned.” ■
Sunday Times 30 Jan 11