We want our Nimrod investment back
 

If everyone signs this Im sure it will piss someone off :p

We want our money back on the Nimrod MRA4

Like the Government are going to send you a cheque for your share of MRA4.

They will take absolutely no notice of this website petition. Sorry to be blunt but it's time for everyone in Cheshire to wake up and smell the roses and not what you put on them to make them grow.

Don't you think I know that? And we have smelt whats in the air, its called a ****wit government decimating everything except the people who put us in this position.

Maybe you should get your sense of smell looked at.

Wrong target
 

While agreeing that the end of Nimrod project is a disaster for the defence of the UK it is not the present management of the UK that got us into this situation.

They came to power only to find that the UK was broke, skint, pot less or whatever term you want to use because it all comes to trhe same thing, we just don't have the money!

So the UK cant afford to fly the Nimrod so do you realy want to let BAe put the aircraft into store and charge us yet more £M to do this? I think not the UK PLC has been ripped off to often by BAe, cutting up the Nimrods was the only way to show BAe that the party is over and the UK tax payer has had enough of their antics.

The message is now crystal clear to any defence contractor...........next time come up with the goods that work & on time or UK PLC won't pay.

...but at what price to capability etc does this petty game of "Let's Teach BAe A Lesson" come?

Forget the petition. I am sure history will show that there was more to the Nimrod decision than just the SDSR. Would it actually have passed the safety case that the MAA was investigating?

The real campaign should be for a replacement MPA - and that probably being a (quite big) UAV as I can see no need for a manned aircraft in that (maritime) role. The manned element is amply provided by the Merlin MPH.

The MRA4 project was already payed for so scrapping it has done nothing to BAE's balance sheet.....if anything closing Woodford 18 months early will only add to the balance sheet when its sold off to private developers.

Hangering Nimrod for a couple of years will be far cheaper than replacing it with a P8 or whatever else the MOD will be looking at when times are better.....if the RAF is still around when better times arrive.

Maybe Cameron has already brokered a deal with the French to take over the role the RAF plays......I wouldn't put it past these muppets.

But we have the money to give away in foreign aid (4.5billion) to the likes of India who clearly with a space and defence budget of 50 billion doesn't need our cash but we still insist on giving it to them :ugh:

Isn't the answer to the question posed by this thread that its been invested in overseas aid? Then again, its been invested in BAE Systems!? We should tell them we want our money back.:ok:

FB:)

Bismark,

If a large UAV was the way forward dont you think as the worlds leading creator of UAV's the USA would be building one. The good thing about LRMPA is that it can go world wide. Do you think UK PLC has satelites available world wide with the sort of bandwidth required, or is able to re direct existing ones for a MPA mission, I think not. There have been a vast amount of times when being on scene with MK1 eyeball proves to provide a successful mission. Would a UAV be able to carry 200+ sonobuoys and weapons, yes maybe so but would they all be pre-programmed or would that me another technological cost to develop such a sonobuoy. Who would rectify a sonobuoy hang-up prior ro flying back overland, particularly as Kinloss will be no more. And what would the CAA or any other aviation authority say about such a large technologically advanced UAV flying in amongst the civvies?

Manned MPA are still the way forward, computers are not the be all and end all in MPA missions, the people are. Although sadly the blinkered bufoon Cameron doesnt get to know this as his advisors and Ministers do not know the subject matter as was proven recently.

This demise of a LRMPA will not be mitigated fully by the standard MOD statement, if it reaches 20% of what the MR2 did then it will be a lucky day. So I will gladly listen to any counter arguement over a UAV, that can be deployed worldwide at short notice, as was the MR2.

Hoots

Your flogging a dead horse mate, the one's your trying to convince are the very people who believe all the ****e the government and tabloids has been saying about the MRA4 being unsafe. :ugh:

I'll have a pint of whatever you're drinking.

Sadly, this comes from lessons identified folowing the Nimrod AEW3 fiasco. Sadly, the Government of the day listened to GEC-Marconni and continued to plough money into a project that had little chance of success. Even the company noticeboards to staff did not tell the truth.

The only outcome comes from modern project management techniques. If the project comes out of tolerence then you seriously look at cutting losses and binning it. If either available funds or time cannot be met, then the writing is on the wall. It may be harsh, but it stops throwing much good money after bad. If the desired capability can be met elsewhere (and I include from Military Coalition partners) then financial constraints must apply - especially after the last totally imprudent 13 years of financial mismanagement. Bottom line - we cannot afford it because we don't know how much it will cost and we don't know when it will be ready.

The MRA4 is dead, all I am referring to is the arguement regarding a UAV replacing a manned aircraft. Some people automatically think a UAV can do everything without thinking about the cost of satelites etc to enable global reach, plus the fact that there is very little black and white about MPA Ops and a whole lot of grey at times so you need the brain power on the spot for that one. Also consider IR cameras etc and the poor performance during a moist North Atlantic crappy night compared with a dry desert climate, those of you who have been there will know what I mean. So although we heard the term RMPA back in 95-96, that is what we need now, with people on board who make the difference using a multi-sensor suite and the MK1 eyeball. All we need is a govenrment with some cash and a willingness to admit they were wrong. Easier said than done with this lot I'm afraid.

You can all have my share of the Comet! :rolleyes:

I wouldn't if I were you - whatever he's drinking, a pint of it would send you blind, incontinent and probably flammable. Unless you want to run your car on it, that is.

For the OP, the good news is that Gordon bought the item in question on a credit card, and under the distance selling regulations you can claim against the credit card guarantor.

For the OP, and the rest of us, the bad news is that the credit card was underwritten by you, me and everyone else who pays UK tax....and Gordon really did go mad with the credit card.

MancC
 

With a little digging into company accounts (freely available under UK law), it is fairly easy to discover that whatever profit BAES had hoped to make from the MRA4 build was swallowed up by the £300Mil + write-down they made against the program in 2000.

About that time, MoD contracts were being re-written such that the Cost plus model was replaced (to prevent unforeseen/unfunded cost overruns). Since then, UK defence contractors have been pegged (by HMTreasury) at target cost type contracts with max profit of around 8% on UK defence contracts. That 8% profit on MRA4 was wiped out in 2000.

I dread to think what it must be like at Woodford, watching perfectly good aircraft being destroyed for no apparent reason other than its name. It was bad enough up here at kinloss watching XV241 being slaughtered last week.

Sad times for all of us, particularly when you have grown up in the service and can see what a bleak future faces everyone.

SFO,

At last someone with some realism on what BAES actually got out of Nimrod!!!

Guys and Girls,

There are two reasons why you all need to let it go and move on.

1. It is over.

(it = coastal, LRMP, Nimrod and the associated layered defence of our SLOC)

2. Every thread started on Nimrod's/MPA's/P8's/whatever incites at least one megatrollgeek to vomit b****cks about UAV's as LRMP aircraft. This is not good for my blood pressure and I have enough trouble with that as it is.

Soul destroying actually :sad: but anger has replaced that, most of the local people who I have spoke to who live around Woodford are also very angry at the waste.

Manccowboy

I'm sure it is. But if the company had come close to delivering on time and to budget, then it would have been a very different story.

S41

Very true. But, despite the delays and budget increases, the company did come close to delivering these aircraft. This, to me, is why seeing them destroyed and the capability lost is such a big blow - far more so than, say, cancelling our part in some future pie-in-the-sky programme like JSF/JCA which is still years from service and is essentially an abstract concept.

"But we have the money to give away in foreign aid (4.5billion) to the likes of India who clearly with a space and defence budget of 50 billion doesn't need our cash but we still insist on giving it to them"

You can argue the rights and wrongs of this one another time but do you honestly believe that if we didn't sent that money we would somehow use it on MPA instead? joe public cares not a jot about some pesky submarines, he wants good education for his kids, good health care and low taxes.

TOTD wrote:

Indeed, I don't disagree; it will be expensive to reopen Coastal with P-8s in 2020, and an entire generation will be lost, needlessly. My point is merely to Manccowboy that he - if I understand him correctly - is a BAES apologist insisting on blaming the government. The contractor screwed up mightily and was never seriously held to account - the £300m writedown SFO mentioned earlier should have been 8-10 times that amount.

S41

Sunk cost.... get over it. The costs are written off and there is no way of getting them back. HMG has made the decision and has no doubt 'saved' another £6Bn in thru life and project completion costs. Sad, but an accounting fact now; it ain't coming back!

I suspect that the average resident of Woodford, Poynton, and Adlington who maybe you didn't speak to couldn't give a sod, so long as the aerodrome closes and their property price edges up.

A badly briefed, hard of understanding Government has taken a through life operating saving and opened up the option for a bonus Station closure.

You are also up against;

Did the heads of BAE sell the cancellation to the Government in order to save something else. BAE knew there was not much money in supporting MRA4 and offered it up to save possible JSF/Carrier order perhaps. The Carrier pre SDSR was favourite to get the cancellation, The MRA4 nobody really expected it not even anyone in the MOD.

Cynical , perhaps!! Whatever, its happened now but one day it will come out through Wiki and we will all know .

Enough..................
 

....................with the Conspiracy theories.......PLEASE!!!!!

Rumpunch I predicted it, not gloating but I did think it was vulnerable and so it proved.

Why not drag BAE Systems in front of a Parliamentary committee, set up an inquiry to get to the bottom of these inadequacies (including airworthiness) and pass specific legislation to levy a hefty fine?

Ahh, the land of dreams....where bankers pay their share as well.....and taxpayers get a fair deal!

It doesn't really matter - in a strange way,
because nobody can, or will ever, point a finger at one person/organisation and clearly state 'this is the git who caused it to happen'. Without a culprit you can't, really, do anything about fixing it.

BWoS, arguably, were in the wrong because of delays, snags still not sorted, reducing number of airframes for increased cost, ancient working practises (I expect, one day, to find the control wheel was hand carved from Tibetan Mahogany with deep sea free range pearl inlay), and so on.

The RAF, on the other hand, had a meeting every second Tuesday, at which the committee members (all 2* and up) read well preserved copies of 'The Eagle' from the 1950's-60's, paying extra attention to the cutaway drawings and the future predictions, before redrafting the air staff target for the Nim MRA4.

The MAA regularly reviewed the MRA 4 safety case, and found themselves compelled to reject it as 'potentially not safe', becuase it included the word 'Nimrod', in fact the latest such rejection counted up to 378 such occurrences and accused the IPT/BWoS of 'reckless Nimrodism of the worst kind'.

The CS overseers were appalled (a quotation directly attributed to a specific episode of Yes Minister), as there was a brief 'window of inopportunity' during which it was conceivable that the senior staff would have to buy their own lunch.

The PM and his 'homies' simply saw the cost and blanched... unfortunately when you don't apply the screening process (IQ etc) to politicians that the RAF applies to picking its aircrew, tradesmen, and - let's try not to say this offensively - dog handlers, then what do you expect by way of government other than weasely opportunists?

There were sundry objections from gun runners, drug cartels, and the current head of what was once called Northfleet who strenuously objected to unwarranted oversight of perfectly legitimate submarine evolutions west of Faslane, and Tommy Sheridan - whose peace campaign struck a particular note with a group calling themselves 'the old lags of D wing'.

To make up for what has been seen as "a bit of a downer", according to a Downing St analyst, it is strongly rumoured that Mr Cameron is going to announce the opening of a new Spitfire OCU in the summer, as everyone really wants to fly one of them anyway.

Dave

Apologies to dog handlers, but Jack was a good laugh and I meant it with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

It should have been renamed. We joked, and actually speculated on good names for a replacement OVER A YEAR AGO (sorry for shouting but its true.) However, it was all laughed off as morale and high-jinks! Would it have mattered? Who cares now! But what if?

A member of this forum - not me, I hasten to add - informed CAS, when he was discussing a proposal to call the MRA4 'Helios', that 'if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck; it's probably a duck.' CAS was speechless!

Duncs:ok:

One must always take a wider view with MoD as they always try to compartmentalise problems.

In this instance, try reading the PAC report into Chinook Mk3. It concludes that no individual or group can be blamed, but does say the main blame lies with "lack of management oversight".

List that "management".

Then do the same for Nimrod.

Compare.

Two names stand out in both. One (to my personal knowledge) was told in infinite detail what would happen on both programmes. Also, both were told of serious airworthiness shortcomings; both ruling in writing that aircraft need not be functionally safe when delivered to the Service. In February 1998.

May I suggest they should be first on any witness list at an inquiry.

@davejb - would you accept that the excellent crew selection criteria to which you referred earlier, may produce superb pilots, of high moral integrity and skill but fails to select the gene which encourages the ability to stick to time and budget?

I have the highest regard for every member of the Armed Forces I have ever met, but sadly I do not recognise their skills in sticking to a budget and leaving the goalposts where they stand.

And that is the root cause of the whole sorry mess - in many ways there are some sad parallels with the BA cabin crew thread whose volume and hostility speaks volumes.

In that circumstance, poor BA management have allowed the cabin crew to achieve the belief that they run the airline and determine priorities, budgets and paying customers are there to protect their employment terms even as the whole world changes around them, and the airline becomes hugely inefficient and full of obsolete working practices. After a decade of living in an unreal world, a new CEO in Willy Walsh arrives, plays hardball and a decade of necessary change introduced in a very short period of time. The paying public greet this largely with a cheer, and a "about time too" attitude. The union loses all support from the public.

In this circumstance, poor MOD management have allowed the armed forces to achieve the belief that their needs determine government priorities, budgets and the exchequer are there to protect the size and scope of the armed forces even as the whole world changes around them, and the central MOD function becomes hugely inefficient and full of obsolete working practices. After a decade of living in an unreal world, a new Prime Minister in David Cameron arrives, plays hardball and a decade of necessary fiscal proberty is introduced in a very short period of time. The paying public greet this largely with a "shock and awe at the waste", and a "about time too" attitude.

I do not think for one minute that the public will lose faith in the armed forces, but let's not push it shall we ?

really annoyed
 

feckin persistent, I'll give you that:}

cnut springs to mind tramps , but let thee have there fun

Strewth guys and gals
How many threads do we have to have knocking about the pros and cons of the Mighty Hunter's demise? It has gone, ceased to be and never to be seen again. It may or may not be replaced by a new platform when the country can afford to support this role again but for now stop your bleating and move on.

Actually Graham,
my post was intended to suggest that the problem originates in a number of factors, and probably cannot be laid at a single door, not that I imagine the powers that be would welcome having the guilty parties identified.

However,

is one bit I'd have to disagree with being laid at the door of the uniformed contingent, I'd say sticking to time and budget was an issue that BWoS and MoD should be more accountable for.

I'd also tend to suggest that a major factor in MoD going over budget has probably been the way our forces have been committed repeatedly to act in overseas theatres - Gulf 1 and 2, Bosnia, Afghanistan being the headliners but not the only expensive events since 1990. We've been trying to run the forces on peacetime budgets while our political masters have been most reluctant to ensure they have peacetime roles to fulfill.

Having said that about MoD, I have to admit that the cynic in me believes the budget would have been exceeded year in year out had the forces done nothing more strenuous than attend the annual Scout Jamboree during that same period of time....

Dave

Simple....

If these threads are bothering you then don't f**king read them :rolleyes:

I think point is that just like a nimrod in the Gulf we are going round and round in big circles!!!!