MancC
With a little digging into company accounts (freely available under UK law), it is fairly easy to discover that whatever profit BAES had hoped to make from the MRA4 build was swallowed up by the £300Mil + write-down they made against the program in 2000.
About that time, MoD contracts were being re-written such that the Cost plus model was replaced (to prevent unforeseen/unfunded cost overruns). Since then, UK defence contractors have been pegged (by HMTreasury) at target cost type contracts with max profit of around 8% on UK defence contracts. That 8% profit on MRA4 was wiped out in 2000.
I dread to think what it must be like at Woodford, watching perfectly good aircraft being destroyed for no apparent reason other than its name. It was bad enough up here at kinloss watching XV241 being slaughtered last week.
Sad times for all of us, particularly when you have grown up in the service and can see what a bleak future faces everyone.