The main thing that went wrong with the MRA4 project was the expectations set in the 1995 Bid. MoD stressed to BAe that this was an open competition, and that the best performance coupled with the lowest cost would win. A couple of significant programmes, the Merlin helicopter and the Hercules upgrade C-130J, had already gone to American companies and BAe senior management thought that the loss of the competition to an American company would seal the company’s fate. Thus the Company treated RMPA as a must-win competition. MoD had set a budget of approximately £2bn and this conditioned BAe’s cost estimating for the originally proposed MR2 refurbishment programme (to be followed up with an MPA version of the FLA now A400.) In retrospect it is obvious that the extra cost put in for rewinging and re-engining was insufficient (an extra 25% at most) and the programme timescale was more or less unchanged from that pertaining to the originally proposed MR2 refurbishment programme. In short MoD asked for a golden apple and the company offered them one: a situation now described as “a conspiracy of optimism”. Certainly all those on the programme sweated blood to achieve the programme, but it was mission impossible from the start and merely a question of time how long the conspiracy would last.
The outturn costs stand comparison with those for the P-8 Poseidon given on the US GAO website. P-8 costs are estimated as $7.35bn (£4.9bn) and $202m (£134m) per aircraft, which makes $9.2bn (£6bn) for a nine aircraft fleet. £4bn for Nimrod MRA4 is cheap by comparison, particularly when you consider that one MRA4 is as operationally capable as two P-8s. I suggest therefore that MRA4 would have been excellent value for money. Not to be forgotten, however, is the fact that it was subsidised by the ever generous shareholders of BAE Systems through several write-offs.
In terms of the programme I'm sure things could have been done quicker (perhaps saving 3 years) but 15 years from contract to service is not unusual these days. Certainly it is better than Eurofighter Typhoon (a vastly simpler aircraft) and, let’s face it, better than what the USN has achieved with MMA/P-8. It should not be forgotten that the USN initiated its P-3 replacement programme (P-7) in 1989 and cancelled it due to cost overrun in 1990. Thus with the P-8 not yet in service and still with a number of hurdles to get over, the USN has waited even longer than the RAF to replace its cold war MPAs.
Ultimately the BAE Systems Team produced a world-beating product at a non-unreasonable price and in the sort of timescale one might have expected. I feel desperately sad for the consequent redundancies in the RAF for those who were waiting to operate MRA4, but it should not be forgotten that BAE have suffered 2500 job losses so far as a result of SDSR with undoubtedly more still to come. Cancellation at the time it came with the programme cost spent and the aircraft almost ready was completely illogical particularly with the SDSRs clear statement of the importance of ISTAR capability and MRA4 being the most flexible ISTAR platform the MoD would have ever had. Unfortunately MRA4 finally fell victim to the need for a big political gesture and inter-service rivalry where each service protected its own "toys" and allowed the "orphan" platforms to go hang, ie the naval platforms operated by the RAF such as MRA4 and Harrier and the Army platform operated by the RAF, ie Sentinel.
Eminence Gris