Navy to buy new aircraft
THE Royal Navy is looking to buy a fleet of maritime patrol aircraft for up to £1 billion just weeks after the Ministry of Defence scrapped the new Nimrod aircraft at a cost of £3.6 billion.
The MoD confirmed last week that the navy wanted to buy its own maritime patrol aircraft to track enemy submarines to replace the Nimrods, which are being broken up for scrap.
The new RAF Nimrod MRA4s had not even come into service when the prime minister announced last October that as part of the strategic defence review he was scrapping Nimrod.
The navy, which was furious that RAF bosses had agreed to get rid of Nimrod at a time of increased submarine activity, has already set up a team to buy a replacement and ensure that it is flown by the Fleet Air Arm. The programme is being run by Commodore Simon Kings with a team made up of naval officers.
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There are 3 comments to this article
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hammie
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 06:22 PMsadly the end of the cold war has not removed the threat in any way. The ships and submarines are still out there and new threats will emerge, perhaps the Chinese, perhaps some middle Eastern despot. The one thing that is certain is that in an emergency it takes longer to build a navy than an army or air force.
nmichael
Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 11:44 AMdid'nt this threat finish with the cold war so much for defence reviews, 20 years ago it was a Leander with tow array now its a fleet of aircraft.
Liebour 1997-2010
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 05:33 PMI predict that an order for a small number of the Boeing p-8 aircraf will be made, maybe 5........ We should have scrapped the Nimrod MRA4 back in 2001 ,by 2005 the project was untenable but still it rolled on consuming money. The last Government didn't have the courage to cancel it
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