Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has been warned by officials
If this is true, I think the public ought to know just who these "officials" are and what the basis for the decision is. The cost values for conversion which appears to be the nub of the argument simply don't stack up.
There are no compelling technical reasons for going back to B (far from it!) and the risk balance short and long-term must surely be in favour of C. JFZ may well be correct that it's a profiling issue, in which case this simply compounds all the errors of the past, which are supposed to have been absorbed and learned from.