Saturday 28 April 2012

NIMROD Replacements ? – the media (well the Daily Mail) has carried a story that months after axing of £4.1bn the nine (9) NIMROD MRA4 fleet in October 2010, and is doing created a 'culpability gap', that “Ministers” are ready to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on new aircraft quoting a senior RAF officer as a source, who revealed that the Ministry of Defence are looking at the ‘off-the shelf’ options of the Boeing RC-135 RIVET JOINT or the Boeing P-8 POSEIDON.  

In March 2010 the Ministry of Defence announced that it had reached agreement with the US Government to purchase three (3) RC-135W RIVET JOINT aircraft along with associated ground systems to replace the NIMROD R1 aircraft of 51 Squadron engaged in Signals Intelligence.  The NIMROD R1 was retired in June 2011, and the replacements are scheduled to be delivered between 2014 and 2018.   The RIVET JOINT is an old airframe (essentially a Boeing 707) and has no history of being used in the maritime reconnaissance role whilst the POSEIDON (essentially a Boeing 737 airframe) first flew in 2009 and has been ordered in quantity by the US Navy and India and Australia have ordered the type.    Air Vice-Marshal Mark Green, Director of the Ministry of Defence  joint and air capability transformation” was reported as saying to the House of Commons Defence Committee that :  The underlying view of the MoD is that an aircraft is likely over the medium term to be the solution that actually fills the gap that was created when we took the Nimrod out of service.’

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