Letter: Nimrod stupidity

HAVING spent my working life as a merchant seaman, I have some knowledge of defence requirements from working with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

Shipping provides 90 per cent of UK imports. Twice during the world wars of the last century Britain was brought to near defeat by submarines.

Our recently installed government has imposed changes: cancelling the Nimrod programme and carrying out the continued building of the two aircraft carriers.

The Nimrod aircraft is a defensive aircraft, capable of controlling a sea area and killing any attack submarines it finds within its patrol area. It can also operate as a very useful intelligence-gathering aircraft. Unfortunately, the Mark IV Nimrod was cancelled.

The UK government has decided to go ahead with the construction of two large aircraft carriers. There is nothing wrong with this if there is a valid reason for the vessels' existence. However, an aircraft carrier is a sea control ship; basically it controls an area with a radius of 250 miles from the carrier. A carrier battle group is an offensive group, designed to attack.

Why have we scrapped a defensive aircraft programme, designed to protect our own shores out into the Atlantic, for an attack programme which we cannot afford? I find it slightly daft that we scrap the Nimrod programme to buy two aircraft carriers but we cannot buy the aircraft to fly from them.

To me this is really, really stupid.

WL Bartlett

Master mariner

Bruce Grove

Pencaitland, East Lothian