hanfimar. In all fairness, it must have taken MoD a fair while to copy and paste that letter together from various Press releases.
the Ministry of Defence has sought to mitigate the gap in capability through the use of other military assets, including Type 23 Frigates, Merlin Anti Submarine Warfare helicopters and Hercules C-130 aircraft
Are those the same T23s that will be covering the gaps left by the wirhdrawn T22s? the ASW Merlins that are already overstretched on training and deployment at sea? the Hercs that have excellent radios, MK1 eyeballs and cameras but are already tied up on active Ops?
the Government concluded that, amongst other decisions, the Nimrod MRA4 would not be brought into service, owing to the military tasks to which it was designed to contribute, the amount of public money that had been spent on it, and the impact of such a decision on the people who have dedicated their careers to delivering this capability, or who depend on it for their livelihoods.
I have read that sentence several times, juggled the punctuation and tried to second guess any typos and still can't make sense of it. I suppose if you write a sentence of sufficient length, it can mean anything you want.