Military folk with decades of maritime experience, on the ground and in the air, were venting their frustrations about all of this in 1990's
TOFO is correct, and MoD(PE) in London and then AbbeyWood (which dates it to pre-July 1995) were saying the same.
The reason for cancellation, eventually admitted on 3 February 2014 (that it could
never be certified), was well known and regarded as a standing risk. BAeS's suggested mitigation was that they establish a new production line with modern tooling, etc. As soon as MoD rejected that strategy, the programme would have been a nightmare as its entire focus would have shifted. It is less well known that the parallel Sea King AEW programme went through exactly the same argument, at the same time. The solution to the endorsed requirement was Merlin AEW (what, 20+ years later, will be Crowsnest). There was a political overrule and PE was instructed to let the contract on another contractor, who hadn't bid (handy if your MP is a Defence Minister), and to modify existing AEW Mk2s. The essential difference between the aircraft was that Sea King was basically sound, with very little work needed to bring her up to scratch. But in addition to, for example, the above mainplane issues, Nimrod had suffered from serious neglect - exposed publicly post-XV230. No hope of a public inquiry, but I wonder if an insider might write a book?