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back to article Antique Nimrod subhunters scrapped – THANK GOODNESS!

The UK press is bursting with indignation today as the process of scrapping the Nimrod MRA4 submarine-hunting aircraft begins. But in fact the four planes now being broken up were a financial and engineering disaster. Had they gone into service they would have become a terrible, cripplingly expensive millstone around the neck of …

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    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Megaphone

      AC@14:43

      " This will have a big effect on the local area - many of these people were my schoolmates"

      As it *always* does. Is it in a marginal Lib Dem or Con seat? Being in one (when Labor was in power) was very helpful then they were deciding where to build the next generation of aircraft carriers and submarines (coincidentally also built by BAe)

      And once again BAe will play the "But think of the *incalculable* loss of skills/jobs/(revenue-to-us) to British industry" card.

      As they *always* do.

      I think BAe have used it's staff as "human shields" *many* more times than Saddam Hussein ever did.

      ""Maybe they should use some of the billions saved to help the 450 employees and families who will be affected when the jobs are lost."

      I quite agree.

      As others have said if it's defense industry jobs you could take *half* the programmes cost and pay *every* worker (they tend to earn normal peoples salaries, not investment gamblers) their *lifetimes* salary *several* times over and still come out a *long* way ahead.

      It's funny in the 80's people used a similar argument to keep open the steel works of British Steel open. A group with 10s of 1000s of workers.

      The government of the day didn't bat an eyelid on shutting them down.

      I find defense engineering fascinating (human kind is rarely so creative as when it's trying to hunt and kill its fellows) but I loath special pleading by giga dollar (most of BAe staff are *not* in the UK and most of it's revenue is not in £. So much for the "British" in BAe) defense con-tractors.

      I don't think I've *ever* seen a group of *huge* companies more prone to special case whinning that than the giga corps of the defense *business* (not hobby, charity, vocation or sacred trust)

      Actually I do have a more constructive suggestion on defense procurement but I'll leave than for a more balanced post.

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  2. OzBob
    IT Angle

    At least you still have a air-based strike force,...

    since the Skyhawks and Aermachies were mothballed, most of the combat aircraft in New Zealand are owned by Peter Jackon of LOTR fame.

    http://www.omaka.org.nz/exhibits.htm

    (There's a Stuka and a Hurricane on the lawn in front of the museum as well but they strangely don't include phots on their website. Well, they were there 4 weeks ago when I cycled past)

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    1. Anomalous Cowherd Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      No bad thing

      New Zealand having a strike airforce is as useful as Austria having a navy.

      I vaguely recall them considering some F4 phantoms many years ago - thank christ that one didn't pan out.

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      1. Dagg Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Pint

        So Very True!

        Any country that is capable of invading NZ would have the hardware that could easily out fly and out gun anything that NZ could afford to buy.

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        1. Diogenes
          Reply Icon
          Black Helicopters

          New Zealand 100% for the taking

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo6fgZ-dbOw

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: At least you still have a air-based strike force,...

      "most of the combat aircraft in New Zealand are owned by Peter Jackon of LOTR fame"

      But he also knows a few dragons who are willing to pitch in if there's a crisis. So, panic over for now!

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    3. fred #257
      Reply Icon
      Alert

      Air-based joke I think you mean

      Peter Jackson's Sopwith Camels or whatever are probably more use anyway. Since the Guvmint mothballed the Shi... Skyhawks they've been trying to sell them, curiously nobody else seems to be interested in small old slow jet fighters with limited range and high airframe hours.

      At least we do have some Orions which are much more useful for all sorts of things, not least finding lost yachts.

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  3. Desk Jockey
    Headmaster

    Airframes are unimportant it is the kit on them that counts

    By way the way, don't forget those fantastic Rivet Joints (in fact a rather good deal for Blighty) are almost as old as the Nimrods as many of those airframes entered service in the 1950s (KC 135 tankers mainly). The reason being is that the USAF cannot stand the modern Boeing airframes which cannot take the weight of all the electronic equipment. Those planes are fantastically over-engineered which makes them very useful while the new ones are computer designed and have limited weight margins. Age is no barrier to success!

    Truthfully, what big lumbering plane you use to fly spy or anti-sub missions with is irrelevant, what counts is the kit on board. Having said that, Nimrod was a travesty of BAE political lobbying overcoming any commercial or engineering common-sense.

    Final point - No UAV in the world can do the same job as the Nimrod R1s or the Rivet Joints nor will they for a number of years yet. There are lots of technical reasons for this so don't bother trying to sell the idea that UAVs such as Reaper can take on this role. What they do is completely different and while they are cheaper to run, having a big flying command post full of thinking and judgemental humans is one of the most useful things a soldier can have. UAVs don't cut it and cannot transmit the same level of data back to analysts on the ground. Maybe in the future, but that is a long way away and cannot be done now. The end of that argument!

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      re: Final point

      I think you missed the point, which was that the MR2s (not R1s as you state) were being used simply as a platform for seeing into valleys, for which UAVs would have been equally effective or possibly better at considerably less cost.

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      1. Scorchio!!
        Reply Icon

        Re: re: Final point

        "I think you missed the point, which was that the MR2s (not R1s as you state) were being used simply as a platform for seeing into valleys, for which UAVs would have been equally effective or possibly better at considerably less cost."

        Not just UAVs, but also the new breed of high flying semi-dirigibles, which can stay aloft for very long periods of time. The only problem there would be weather, unless there were no ECMs on board in the event that the Talibs obtained sophisticated weaponry, in which case make that two.

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      2. Desk Jockey
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Still not quite

        No, that just tells us that the MOD does not have enough UAVs, not that the current planes cannot do their jobs.

        It is a little more complex than just pointing a camera into the valleys or relaying communications. Whilst it is true that UAVs should be doing that job, not big planes with lots of people in the back, those planes are actually doing quite a bit more than just 'looking'. Their version of looking includes eavesdropping, taking bearings on Taliban transmissions, jamming signals, vectoring in ground or other spy units like UAVs etc. These are dark arts that require a highly trained and thinking himan to do, the UAVs cannot cut it. The human has to be close to the action in order to follow the transmissions and the kit they need is rather heavy hence you need a big plane to carry it.

        I was not making a point that these planes were not doing jobs better suited to UAVs. My point was that saying a UAV can replace these planes is not true and won't be true for a long time yet. UAVs can only do a small proportion of the job and yes using a hammer to crack a nut is excessive, but using a nutcracker to hammer a nail is stupid too!

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Brilliant....

    ... funniest thing I've read in ages!

    Unless it was meant as a piece of serious "journalism", in which case it was some of the most ill-informed rubbish I have read this year - is Mr Page trying out for a desk at the Daily Fail?

    Just picking up on Desk Jockey's comment; the actual airframes of the Rivet Joint aircraft are older than the Nimrods they will be replacing - not the design, the airframe!

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  5. davenewman

    Last Comets to not come down with metal fatigue

    I thought it was civilian Comets, with square windows, that were notorious for breaking in two after metal fatigue had grown cracks from the window corners right around the fuselage? It was so famous that Nevil Shute wrote a popular thriller about it.

    So how come the Nimrods haven't cracked open?

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    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov
      Reply Icon

      So how come the Nimrods haven't cracked open?

      They've cut the corners...

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      1. The First Dave
        Reply Icon
        Dead Vulture

        untitled

        "The Comet, designed in the 1940s, failed commercially"

        But not technically. Once the metal fatigue issues were understood and overcome, it has remained a good technical design. That people were scared by the problems with the Mark 1 is totally irrelevant to this decision.

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        1. ideapete
          Reply Icon

          Boeing said thanks

          As they watched the Comets plow into the ground ( Pun ) copied all the troubleshooting data that followed and Hey Presto the 707 - Saved them a ton of money and bits of peoplehttp://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/coat_32.png

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Easy....

      ....because it was only the Comet 1s that had this problem, the Comet 2, 3 and 4, and the Nimrod, all had rounded windows. Well, the Nimrod had precious few windows by comparison actually.

      The problems on the Comet were due to lack of knowledge of certain types of failure and R.E.Bishop's original design being changed in production because of difficulties encountered in glueing the window surrounds to the skins. This was done with Redux metal glue, but the process was awkward and eventually the production engineers said that if they could change to riveting in addition to the glue it would allow them to meet their delivery schedules.

      So, rivets went in, but the drilling required left holes that were not reamed to an adequate standard (there are stories of mis-drilled holes being left in place too) and so served as stress concentrators and hence crack generators.

      These were the days when it was viewed as acceptable to deliver aircraft with cracks found in production stop-drilled, but in a weak airframe (Comets were severely underpowered and to compensate the skin thickness was reduced to extremely small values) such actions led to structures that could not sustain the increased cyclic pressurisation loads with the result that we all know.

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    3. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      @davenewman

      "I thought it was civilian Comets, with square windows, that were notorious for breaking in two after metal fatigue had grown cracks from the window corners right around the fuselage?"

      Not quite. The original comet design had square windows whose corners acted as stress concentrators, which eventually called structural failure. The design was revised but the length of time taken to handle the situation meant other design were bought by the airlines. Frankly De Havilland (the original manufacturer) eagerness to use their own engine subsidiaries engines (none of which were very powerful) mandated *very* thin sheet and their lack of long term fatigue testing (to get it into the market ahead of Boeing) coupled with a patchy record on stress analysis (they seemed to have a tendency to break up in mid air) pretty much spelt accident waiting to happen.

      " It was so famous that Nevil Shute wrote a popular thriller about it."

      Not quite. The one I know "No highway" was written in 1948, the comet crashes date from the early 50's. It's been filmed with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. The book is better.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    End of Nimrod?

    I can still remember the last Nimrod acquisition disaster. Back in the late 1980s when I was a student at Manchester University, studying aeronautical engineering, we were encouraged to join the Royal Aeronautical Society. One evening we went to a meeting of the society at BAE Woodford and were shown the Nimrod AEW3 airframes that had cost over a billion pounds to develop, but had failed to make it to operational flying; the RAF went on to buy the US made Boeing E-3 Sentry that they'd wanted in the first place.

    Full details of this disaster here: http://www.spyflight.co.uk/nim%20aew.htm

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  7. IsJustabloke
    Thumb Up

    I refuse to enoble a simple forum post....

    I largely agree with Lewis on this, however, it is probably fair to say that the Nimrod crews can't be replaced with cheap imports and that they are universally respected around the world for their skill and capabilities.

    They have begun training with the rivet joint guy's and our colonial cousins are expecting to get as much out of our guy's as much as we're expecting to get out of them.

    Despite being underfunded / overstretched our armed forces are still amongst the most respected in the world and we should be proud of that.

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    1. ideapete
      Reply Icon

      Nimrod Brits seen at NAS Jacksonville

      Dont think its a surprise as we have heard that several brits in RAF uniforms have been on a tour of proposed Poseidon bases in the US end of last year including Naval Air Station Jacksonville . At least they may have been brits walking real upright and bitching about the cold beer. I couldn't find any female information on the state of their rods , nim or otherwise http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/pint_32.png

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Whoops...

    Forgot to mention search and rescue.

    Ignore security work, secret missions in the sandbox, subs or anything like that. The most useful function Nimrod had was providing search and rescue capability right out into the Atlantic. Not only searching vast areas of ocean but also deploying life rafts and vectoring helicopters.

    Oh well...

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    1. Alfred
      Reply Icon

      That's not what they're actually for, though

      It's lovely that they did that as an added bonus, but it's not what they're for and it's certainly not worth the price tag.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Crap plane - but...

    Comparing the price of the development of the Nimrod to the price of a new Orbiter is misleading as it ignores the huge amounts of money NASA sunk into designing the Shuttle in the first place.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    AEW3 ?

    Surprised no one has mentioned the £3 billion UK plc spent on the godawful GEC-Marconi[1] early warning radar that was was meant to be fitted to the Nimrod. Beloved of no one, and running at it's peak 1,000 change requests a day ....

    [1]Readers under 30 may need to ask their parents .....

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      The real story...

      ...right at the end was rather different. The basic radar system was working well, but it had a serious problem with returns from road traffic overloading the processing. Hence the people where I worked (part of GEC) created the Vehicle Correlator, a piece of hardware that removed these unwanted targets before the software that maintained the tracks on screen saw them. This was otherwise known as the "car crusher". This was the point at which GEC had been allowed to manage the project itself, previously this was done from arms length by MOD PE who were notorious for getting it wrong (nothing changes then, they're still doing it today).

      However, as we all knew anyway, the crabs (RAF types) were set on jollies to the US of A where they could learn all about the AWACS system, rather than being instructed on the Nimrod system up at sunny RAF Woodford (not!) so, dressed-up by the RAF brass as a heap of junk, the plug was pulled on Nimrod despite the long and thankless labours of all of the people working at the GEC Avionics Borehamwood, Radlett and Hemel Hempstead sites.

      Mine's the one with the offset-fed carbon-fibre S-band antenna in the pocket, not that nasty folded-cassegrain one with the sidelobe problem! (wonder how many people remember that aspect of the performance problems?)...

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Black Helicopters

        The whole thing was a socialist abortion

        foisted on the RAF by a heavily politicised MoD who were being told the supplier must be British at all costs ... typical of the 1960s Labour philosphy which bought you the Austin Allegro and Morris Marina.

        Technically AIUI the system was actually *too good*. One (unconfirmed) rumour I heard was that it could pick up field mice ...

        On a tangent, does anyone recall the GEC scientists that started commiting "suicide" in increasing bizarre ways ?

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        1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
          Reply Icon
          Coat

          AC@18:18

          "On a tangent, does anyone recall the GEC scientists that started commiting "suicide" in increasing bizarre ways "

          Dimly.

          it was in the late 80s, early 90's.

          Someone noticed a bunch of specialists had committed suicide. I don't think they were all with the Generally Evil Company but they were all (or mostly) Asian men (Indian or Pakistani origin, not Viet Nam), most if not all were married and the suicides often involved drowning in lakes or rivers. They all seemed to be involved in "Signal processing" IIRC in a marine environment, so probably EW or ASW work. There was a book published but it did not seem to have a theory.

          BTW I don't think it's a myth that the suicide rate amongst married Asian men is exceptionally low.

          The whole thing seemed so bizarre I kept expecting a rather dapper old Etonian in a bowler hat and umbrella to pop up and start asking questions.

          Mine will be the one with The Avengers Season 1 DVD in the pocket.

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    2. Tanuki
      Reply Icon
      IT Angle

      It's a bird, innit? It's a bloody sea bird . .. Albatross!

      If you mention the 1980s Nimrod AEW3 I may have to bore you to suicidally-high levels of ennui with tales of semaphore-programming on the dreaded GEC 40xx series computers.

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      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        @Tanuki

        "If you mention the 1980s Nimrod AEW3 I may have to bore you to suicidally-high levels of ennui with tales of semaphore-programming on the dreaded GEC 40xx series computers."

        Would that have been the processor that ran so hot it needed liquid cooling?

        Very fortunate indeed that the Nimrod designers had included space for some large coolant tanks in the wings.

        Seriously weren't programmed in some kind of GEC proprietary language known only to a bout 4 people outside the company (3 of whom were ex employees)?

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      2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        @Tanuki

        My mistake. The proprietary language I was thinking of turned out to be the Babbage assembler (although from some of the source it looks a *nice* assembler) whose layout fooled me into thinking it was an HLL.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Are you being served?

    Just to add some historical perspective, the De Havilland Comet was the airliner featured in the "Are You Being Served?" film. And the last time I saw Portillo doing anything, he was wearing a pink shirt and enthusing about some railway journey on television.

    Maybe these two apparently unconnected events really have a deeper, hidden connection that we're all missing. Get on the case, Lewis!

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  12. bitmap animal
    FAIL

    Tabloid headline grabbing!

    Very disappointed to see tabloid headline-grabbing tactics of valuing one plane using the total project cost against the build costs of individual production aircraft. That is grossly unfair and IMHO discredits the rest of the article despite the costs being clarified later on. I’m sure everyone here is intelligent enough to read through that but a silly and meaningless point.

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    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      @bitmap animal

      "Very disappointed to see tabloid headline-grabbing tactics of valuing one plane using the total project cost against the build costs of individual production aircraft."

      Look up the term "Absorption costing".

      It's *very* popular in military procurement circles (popular with military con-tractors that is).

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    @davenewman

    It was, the early Comet 1's suffered a series of disastrous accidents due to rapid depressurisaton. This led to a major redesign, leading ultimately to the Comet 4 which was effectively a brand new design - the Nimrod is based on the Comet 4, but there is very little of the original Comet design in Nimrod.

    It also points out part of the reason why Comet was not a commercial success. The redesign meant that Comet was late back into the marketplace, so was playing catch up; and like many British designs of the time (cf VC10 and Trident) it was overengineered; I flew on both Comets and VC10s in the '70s and they were much more pleasant flying experiences than their US equivalents.

    But there is another reason, and this is also a major factor in why Britain no longer manufactures large aircraft. The Boeing 707 only succeeded commercially because the tanker version was bought by the USAF; effectively the US Government and military subsidised the civil airliner, which meant that it was impossible for anybody else to compete effectively. The irony, when you look at Boeing's recent complaints about the unfair subsidy of Airbus, is almost too funny.

    Paris, because Mr Page obviously thinks if it is American it is immediately superior to everything else.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      VC10 (over)engineered for a reason

      To fly off short runways in "hot and high" locations around the former colonies.

      Result was a fast and quiet ride.

      Sales were not helped by mucking about from BOAC.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Down

        And especially....

        ...from civil servants who had not appreciated the rate at which Britain's "empire routes" to East Africa and the Far East were disappearing in the 1960s, skewing the aircraft programmes towards requirements that made them uneconomic when pushed into trans-atlantic services that were becoming some of the most important air routes due to the increase in travel from the US to Europe.

        Nice looking aeroplane though, with a lot of reserve power for when things went wrong and a missed approach was needed in poor weather.

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      2. Scorchio!!
        Reply Icon

        Re: VC10 (over)engineered for a reason

        "Result was a fast and quiet ride."Q

        Quiet? It was also a troop transport, and I recall them as noisy beasts.

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        1. AndyMM
          Reply Icon

          So do I

          Quiet was not how I recall them either.

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    2. Davey1000
      Reply Icon

      Boeing and the VC10s

      I have flown in VC10s several times and IMHO they are a superb aircraft noted for the quietness inside the cabin. Many years ago British Airways auctioned-off their VC10s because they were trading up to bigger planes. To everyone's amazement the high bidder for the VC10s was Boeing! This was a great shame because there were third world airlines still running piston engined planes however these airlines had been outbid. The VC10s were then broken up for scrap as Boeing did not want them in the market place. The double whammy of course was the loss of maintenance contracts and profits from the supply of spares for the planes. A case of Britain being stabbed in the back AGAIN. Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

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  14. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    El Reg...

    ... invented this icon for Lewis' articles. Is he being paid by several US defense lobby groups?

    That said, the MOD civil servants who were involved in the decision making process and procurement need to have their pensions halved.

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  15. David Webb

    Quotes

    More quotes that Lewis missed...

    "Some of Nimrod’s roles in home waters can be covered by frigates, short-range Merlin anti-submarine helicopters or even the C130 Hercules. They fall short, however, of replacing the strategic multi-role contribution of Nimrod"

    In other words, we do not have anything that can fill the gap the Nimrod is going to create, the P8A isn't them saying "we should buy American" it's them saying "we're getting rid of the Nimrod when other countries are looking the opposite direction"

    "Without any explanation, the Security and Defence Review announced that the Nimrod MR4 maritime patrol aircraft would not be brought into service. The decision was fiercely debated within the MoD, but the need for immediate savings and priority for current operations prevailed."

    Looks like the MoD actually wanted to keep the Nimrod.

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    1. Frank Bough
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      Hang on a minute...

      Retiring an aircraft that's NOT YET IN SERVICE doesn't create any kind of gap. The awful truth is that these stupendously expensive aeroplanes don't actually do us any good at the moment anyway.

      Honestly, what is so hard about buying up a fleet of 737s or A-320s and fitting them out with the requisite gear? Why must it cost BILLIONS and take 20 years to complete? Seems to me that the RAF need to insist that electronics packages are built to a standardised modular form such that aircraft don't have to be massively modified to take them. If you want to see an efficient bit of aircraft modification, take a look at NASA's recently launched SOFIA

      http://www.sofia.usra.edu/Sofia/sofia.html

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      1. Vic
        Reply Icon

        Ed Force One...

        > Honestly, what is so hard about buying up a fleet of 737s or A-320s and

        > fitting them out with the requisite gear?

        Iron Maiden's road crew fitted out a 757-200 to fly a world tour. I'll bet their budget was rather smaller than the billions we're seeing here...

        Vic.

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      2. twelvebore
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        History

        Erm... have you clicked on the 'History of SOFIA' link on that web page?

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        1. Frank Bough
          Reply Icon

          Yes...

          ...and that's why it's a good comparison for the Nimrod.

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      3. Anton Ivanov
        Reply Icon
        Flame

        Because you cannot

        The early 737 and A31x can be augmented if you can find one in good condition.

        The stuff coming down the production line today like 737-800 has been considerably "lightened" and "improved" versus the original 737 spec. Grafting all the antennas, pods, sensors, etc is likely to prove seriously problematic without at least some degree of structural redesign and reinforcement as well as some aerodynamic work.

        Compared to that a VC10 or something else from 30 years back is so crazily overspec-ed (by todays standards) that it will fly even if it ends up looking like a camel with a set of jet engines.

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      4. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        WTF?

        engineering knowledge

        if you actually had any real engineering knowledge, you'd realise that Venga buses you quoted ARE NOT SUITABLE to hunt and kill subs at low level. THEY ARE BUSES! NOT HUNTER KILLERS!

        Remember when the Victor Bomber, changed its mission to low level?

        And big cracks were being found when they weren't expected?

        ITS BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T DESIGNED FOR LOW LEVEL!

        How many commentards can you get on one article? there should be a counter!

        Next theyll be saying yeah lets save cash by giving the police bicycles to catch people speeding on the motorway...

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    2. ideapete
      Reply Icon

      Numbnuts Numrod

      Everyone knows that MOD would like to have a rod that works and none would use an antique nimrod, the wimen wouldn't stand for it. It was probably a Job creation tool anyway and they at least could have pulled the rivets outa the holes one by one ( rapidly ) to keep the workers peckers up ( Pick your own puns )

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/joke_32.png

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  16. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    @Yes But

    There will be a new long range drone., which although not able to drop supplies or lifeboats will at least video them for youtube.

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