And if we do want the independent, sovereign MPA/ASW capability, then can we afford sufficient P-8s to actually do that? Airbus claim that you can buy twice as many C295 MPAs for half the cost - or four times as many for the same cost. So four P-8As, or 16 C295 MPAs? Eight P-8As or a staggering 32 C295s.
I'm firmly of the realist school that says we can't afford gilt-edged everything, so choose carefully what has to be state of the art.
For MPA I feel that something is distinctly better than the nothing we have now, and that reasonable numbers of something decent is better than low numbers of the gilt-edged. So 16 C295s please!