Anyone know how the business case stacks up for the P-8 vs what carrying on with MRA4 would have cost?
I know it had a few technical issues to resolve, but most of the £4Bn MRA4 acquisition was done & sunk, and mainly support costs lay ahead.
Now the 9 x P8 buy will face ~£2Bn acquisition all over again PLUS the support and what I assume will be new infra cost. That will be a lot. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just keep going with MRA4? Looks like you could have run the nearly finished MRA4 for 10-15 years for what we're about the spend on just buying P-8. Was it just knee jerk 'blame the last lot' politics?
Woodford must feel a bit sick. Last UK aerospace whole aircraft production capability closed for what - a 5 year payment holiday?
It maybe possible to show that carrying on would have been cheaper long term - and the money to borrow to do it was probably buttons. Sad for UK engineering.