iRaven,
The outturn costs of Nimrod 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 (and you do seem to have done so) is the fact that it was subsidised to over £1bn 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 (which RAF aircrew have now been dispatched to help with), 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. The main thing that went wrong with the MRA4 project was the expectations set in the 1995 Bid. 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 of optimism" would last.
EG