The BAE Systems Nimrod MRA4: a planned maritime patrol and attack aircraft using a rebuilt and updated Nimrod MR2 that itself was based on the BEA Comet 4, which was a redesigned Comet 1 first flown in 1949. Cancelled in 2010

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Too expensive. During conversion they discovered that no two airframes were the same, with fuselages even varying in length by a few feet. This made it ridiculously expensive as every conversion became bespoke.

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ArgonWilde@reddit

Ah, true British engineering right there!

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longsite2@reddit

Defence Review.

It had started to be delivered, with the first one flying with the RAF but the whole program was scrapped even with 95% of the development costs already spent.

Lots of work went into this aircraft and the scrapping was one of the saddest days in british aerospace.

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Animal__Mother_@reddit

No. Because it killed its crew.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

MRA4 didn't even fly. Already flying Nimrod airframes were killing crews left and right.

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AP2112@reddit

Not quite 'left and right'... There was one fatal crash in the 15 years leading up to retirement of the Nimrod.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

Considering the low number of Nimrods we've ever had, the number that caught fire is high which culminated with the 2006 crash.

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Known-Associate8369@reddit

I was absolutely heartbroken when they cancelled the MRA4 in 2010, and devastated when they destroyed all the airframes - one of them should at least have made it to a museum.

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Ragnarok_Stravius@reddit

I'm surprised the British even have museums, with how much they seem to love destroying rare or neat stuff they made one ofs.

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EngineerComplex9790@reddit

Course we do, it’s where we keep all the stuff we’ve knocked from other countries.

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DaniTheGunsmith@reddit

British history in Britain: 😤🤚

Stolen history from other countries in Britain: 😏👉

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Grape-Snapple@reddit

now that’s an old fashioned meme format if i’ve ever seen one. not too old, but aged

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Ragnarok_Stravius@reddit

It's probably as old as Drake likes them...

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Grape-Snapple@reddit

hmm… you might be right

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hifumiyo1@reddit

After WWII most were sent to scrapyards to rebuild

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thrashmetaloctopus@reddit

We do have quite a high density of military collections to be fair, but the main issue is large aircraft which very few places have the space to display or the means to transport

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Both-Trash7021@reddit

When it was cancelled it was already 9 years late and widely expected to be £1 billion+ over budget.

Another wonderful British example of how not to do things.

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Known-Associate8369@reddit

I know the economics etc behind it, but at the end of the day it was an iconic British aircraft, and the cancellation was the end of an era.

The Poseidons that were ordered to replace it cost the same as the MRA4 program had up to the point it was cancelled - and it was not projected to cost that again to get the MRA4 into service, so … yeah, there are still some questions around whether the cancellation was the best course of action.

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Username_075@reddit

Unfortunately cancellation was the best idea, the airframe was never going to meet modern airworthiness standards. Like the Astute SSN, it showcased the loss in capability arising from sacking so many people as part of the "peace dividend" just after the Cold War ended.

Astute got saved as they brought in US engineers to sit at Barrow and teach, because no SSN means no deterrent. MRA4 though, you could get the same mission system in a Poseidon with none of the problems.

The problem was that while the original Comet airframe was fine in 1949 things moved on significantly since then. The loss rate of the originals was pretty good, but that was because it was flown by capable pilots who understood it could kill them easily.

So what should have happened is that the fuselage, fin and rudder were resized to give proper stability margins to cope with the newer, larger engines and to meet modern standards. Yaw in particular, as too much cuts off airflow to the engines on one side which is sub-optimal.

Instead they changed very little and bodged on a simplex pitch stab, gurney flap on the rudder and those ridiculously large vertical fins on the tailplane to get something flyable. Which it was, but up to modern standards? Never, unfortunately.

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Mallardjack@reddit

Part of the issue was also that each Nimrod fuselage was essentially unique and therefore the plan to just cheaply stick on a kit of upgrades was doomed to fail. The plan to keep flying a design based on 1950s airliner in frontline roles into the 21st century is a doomed but very British idea...

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richdrich@reddit

Also, the Comet was the first jet airliner, the B707 and derivatives were some years later, as was the B-52.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

KC-135 isn't much different in design years and flying hours but it's also a much simpler mission compared to this.

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sir_noltyboy@reddit

True but the US isn't trying to build the next generation of tankers out of the fuselages.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

Let's put it bluntly. No one sane enough would do that.

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sir_noltyboy@reddit

RAF and BAE in the corner looking sheepish and kicking their heels.............

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PartyLikeAByzantine@reddit

The US has tried to replace the KC-135 since the 90's.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

Exactly. This airframe was the wrong one from a very old design, and some idiots tried to "cut costs" instead of buing new airframes because Nimrod was virtually the last of the last and people had rose coloured specs when they thought about it. It should have been a new design based on Airbus - and we could sell it elsewhere too. The new Boeings we got aren't very different, and even that being based on a 737NG, is a very old hat.

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cstross@reddit

And also there was the fire and fatal crash in Afghanistan -- not of an MRA.4 but of an earlier airframe -- which exposed a serious problem with the modifications required to add in-flight refueling to Nimrods. Then work on fixing that problem exposed the fact that no two Nimrod airframes were identical, they'd all been hand-fettled by the factory and didn't come in uniform spec. It wasn't so much a fleet as a collection of hand-tuned prototypes flying in loose formation.

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Ok-Airline-8420@reddit

I'd heard that. They spent a fortune building jigs and fixtures off a base airframe and then when they tried them on another aircraft they were completely the wrong size. Each one is bespoke and unique.

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Username_075@reddit

The refuelling mod was done in a ridiculously short period of time for the Falklands and was never intended as anything else. The RAF then decided not to spend any more money on it and acted all surprised when decades later it had issues.

The Haddon-Cave report goes into all the detail you might want about the failures of UK military airworthiness that led to that tragedy.

As to hand building airframes, that wasn't a new issue, it was fundamental to aircraft of that era. The issue was that everyone who understood the old airframes was retired or made redundant. Anyone who planned for anything else did so from a position of complete ignorance.

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OldEquation@reddit

You are incorrect.

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Username_075@reddit

In what respect? I'm genuinely interested. I mean, just look at it, it's one aerodynamic bodge after another.

I remember my old boss at BAe MA telling me it was heading into danger in the late 90s, his career advice was to avoid it. The skills necessary were not around any more.

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LounBiker@reddit

The aircraft was unsafe, cancellation was the best option at the time.

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OldEquation@reddit

Please clarify in what respect it was unsafe? I spent 10 years of my life working on it.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

They kept exploding, if you missed that. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to have you working on them?

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Known-Associate8369@reddit

The version of the Nimrod that this was was replacing was the one that had issues - the MRA4 was a complete strip back to bare metal, replacement wings, and all new systems installed, it wouldnt have had any commonality with the earlier models.

It was in effect a brand new aircraft that looked the same as the earlier models - simply because it used remanufactured fuselages as the starting point.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

The "new version" of Nimrod was just old airframes with new wings. The reason it got fucked was because way back they had produced each Nimrod by hand, not one being the same as others.

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13thDuke_of_Wybourne@reddit

Not sure why you are being downvoted, as this is what happened.

BAE designed the new wings with CAD using a airframe they considered representive of the rest of the fleet.

All the original MR1's and MR2's were manufactured in the 60's and 70's before CAD and effectivly each was coach built. Parts made for one aircraft, would not fit another.

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speedyundeadhittite@reddit

It is what it is, Reddit, what else can I expect...

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Known-Associate8369@reddit

The fuselage may have physically been the same, but the wiring, piping and all systems were brand new - only the physical fuselage structure was retained.

BAE even recommended building new fuselages at the start of the project, but it was rejected “for cost reasons”.

Stop equating the earlier Nimrod models with the MRA4.

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jailtheorange1@reddit

The fronts fell off.

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Iliyan61@reddit

the Poseidon is a newer airframe with far more support and multiple allies using it and i suspect it would just be a better (and cheaper) airframe to run considering the massive change in technology between the base airframe design

while i love the nimrod its time had come and gone

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njsullyalex@reddit

And based on an over half century old airframe…

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Madeline_Basset@reddit

one of them should at least have made it to a museum.

Too much time effort and cost to remove every trace of the secret stuff.
Probably a bit embarrassing to have a permanent reminder of the expensive failure.

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Known-Associate8369@reddit

Your first and last points are negated by the fact that they managed it for the older Nimrod versions when they were retired…

Your middle point is the main reason why they werent preserved - they tried to scrap them in secret as well.

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Madeline_Basset@reddit

OK. Fair enough; I was really just speculating.

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wildskipper@reddit

The wiki page for the Nimrod does say that 8 of them are at museums.

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Known-Associate8369@reddit

Thats earlier versions of the Nimrod - none of the MRA4 airframes were preserved, despite several being flying test airframes at the time of the cancellation.

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wildskipper@reddit

Yes, but you can see why there probably wasn't interest from the museums. 8 Nimrods are already on display across the country, the MRA4 is basically the same to most visitors, and they are obviously large aircraft that would take up a lot of room. Most of the fancy stuff from the MRA4 would have been removed anyway, so you'd just be left with basically the same Nimrod.

Personally I'd argue that preserving the Comet was more important historically than a Nimrod variant, and thankfully there's a small number of them on display.

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Known-Associate8369@reddit

There is always interest in new airframes from museums - hell, if Norwich Aviation Museum wanted one (and got one), then other museums would want them too.

And its different enough from the existing airframes that its interesting in itself - there was plenty of interest in the MRA4 when they displayed it at RIAT.

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Bortron86@reddit

At least there are preserved Nimrods out there.

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Maro1947@reddit

I remember sitting in Abingdon and looking at all the AEW wrecks...

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Not_LRG@reddit

My Dad built a full size cut-away fuselage model of the nimrod MRA4 to demonstrate the platform back in the late 90s for British Aerospace. I think it went from Farnborough to Paris and then onto Aldershot.

I remember him telling me they were working out of a hanger at Farnborough and the MOD were all tetchy (He'd refused to sign the OSA) because they apparently had something spicy next door they were working on. In any case apparently within minutes starting work people came wandering through from the supposedly restricted area looking to see what they were up to and only too happy to share what they were doing in return.

I can't imagine it was that spicy tbh but it's a fun anecdote.

He also built a lifesize model of the FLA for farnborough '94.

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SaunteringOctopus@reddit

Love the look of the engines buried in the wings.

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wrongwayup@reddit

Look how they massacred my boy

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brigadoom@reddit

The Comet 4 was flown by a lot of airlnes, BEA was just one. BOAC was maybe a bigger customer and several overseas airlines had them. Dan-Air (aka Dan Dare) flew them after other arilines had withdrawn them

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an_older_meme@reddit

They will never speak of it again.

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commissarcainrecaff@reddit

I was working at GE Aviation when when the cancellation happened: we had dozens of flights control actuators that were half way through upgrading.

We had to finish them all, test them to spec per the contract....and then ship them to the MOD to be crushed.

Such a waste.

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Xeelee1123@reddit (OP)

For me that's the Mar-a-Lago look. But I think the Nimrod aged gracefully, more like Christopher Lee or Ian McKellen, rather than Matt Gaetz or Kimberly Guilfoyle.

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Xeelee1123@reddit (OP)

Source: https://youtu.be/HE5IWSTJHvA

Source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Nimrod_MRA4

Source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Siddeley_Nimrod

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet