September 2010….
“Dear David ,……..
Frankly this process is looking less and less defensible as a proper SDSR (Strategic Defence and Strategy Review) and more like a “super CSR” (Comprehensive Spending Review). If it continues on its current trajectory it is likely to have grave political consequences for us, destroying much of the reputation and capital you, and we, have built up in recent years……..
Deletion of the Nimrod MR4 will limit our ability to deploy maritime forces rapidly into high-threat areas, increase the risk to the Deterrent, compromise maritime CT (counter terrorism), remove long range search and rescue, and delete one element of our Falklands reinforcement plan………..
Even at this stage we should be looking at the strategic and security implications of our decisions. It would be a great pity if, having championed the cause of our Armed Forces and set up the innovation of the NSC, we simply produced a cuts package. Cuts there will have to be. Coherence, we cannot do without, if there is to be any chance of a credible narrative.
Yours
Liam Fox.”
THEN……
The Telegraph - By Liam Fox 28 Jan 2011
“…….The decision to scrap the Nimrod MRA4 programme was one of the most difficult we had to take. This capability was conceived to provide the very outermost ring of long-range layered reconnaissance. The original plan conceived in 1996 was for 21 aircraft to be delivered in 2003. By the time the new Government took office in 2010 the programme had already been reduced to just nine aircraft, was almost £800m over budget with the unit cost of each aircraft ballooning by 300 per cent, and the aircraft were still nowhere near ready to enter service.
The single MRA4 aircraft that had been delivered to the RAF was so riddled with flaws it could not pass its flight tests, it was simply unsafe to fly. I am not prepared to put our service personnel into any plane that isn’t safe. It would have taken more money and more time to rectify all the problems, if it was possible at all, and the onward cost of sustaining even the reduced fleet over the next ten years was a prohibitive £2bn. So we took the decision not to throw good money after bad. In the final analysis, it had to go……..”
So Liam why were you championing it a matter of a few short months ago?
Another reason why you should never trust a politician, as the Big Yin says:
"Anyone who wants to become a politician should be excluded from office for that very same reason"
Utter Cnuts the lot of them!