Sorry saga of Kinloss base's Nimrods

The decision to award what was then a 1.1 billion contract for 12 Nimrod MRA4s to be built at the BAE Systems plant in Manchester ended years of uncertainty hanging over the future of the Nimrod reconnaissance fleet and the base at Kinloss, famed for having Britain's longest airstrip.

Fifty-two months down the line and with the Nimrod budget having reached more than 3bn the new coalition Government has decided that enough is enough. The Nimrod replacement programme has been scrapped, sealing the fate of Kinloss as an RAF base after 71 years of sterling service.

The decision has ended a sorry saga which became a byword for defence procurement bungling and which dates back as far as 1996 when the Government first announced plans for 21 planes to be built to replace the existing Nimrod fleet of MR2 aircraft.

The uncertainty over the future of the fleet rolled on until the 2004 defence review, when the then Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, announced that a go-ahead for the new generation Nimrods would only be given if trials showed problems with the new aircraft's design had been ironed out.

Civil servants at the Ministry of Defence then added to the uncertainty by suggesting that all RAF surveillance aircraft should be concentrated at a single base in England, prompting a successful campaign by Moray politicians and community groups to keep the Nimrods at Kinloss.

By March 2005, the MoD had spent 2.22bn on the Nimrod project and a year later, by the time the BAE contract was announced, the amount spent developing the project had soared to 2.6bn-2.8bn, according to ministry officials.

With the final bill said to be well over 3bn the MoD then announced that the number of MRA4s to be built had been reduced further from 12 to nine. But Browne pledged that the highly advanced planes, fitted with the latest navigation systems, would be deployed to the Moray air base for search and rescue operations and submarine hunting missions, guaranteeing the future of Kinloss for decades and securing more than 1,000 jobs.

The plan had been to have a seamless transition between the Nimrod MR2, one of the RAF's major assets for the past 40 years, and the new MRA4s. But by March of this year when the six remaining "Mighty Hunters" based at Kinloss were officially retired it was already known that it would be 2012 at the earliest before the replacement fleet arrived. Now they will never come.

An MoD spokeswoman said: "All nine Nimrods have now been built but the money spent procuring those aircraft was made by the previous Government. At the moment we cannot give any definite answer as to what will happen to those nine aircraft. And no doubt that decision will be made on what is most sensible and best value for money for the taxpayer."

Lesley Ann Parker, the chief executive of Moray Chamber of Commerce, said it was an astounding decision. She said: "We understand that two MRA4s have been built and are ready for service. The people at the base have told us that this piece of kit is light years ahead of its time and would be capable of doing so much more than the old Nimrods. Why on earth are they scrapping this aircraft?"

Councillor George McIntyre, the convener of Moray Council, said: "What are they going to do with the Nimrods? I understand that two have been perhaps completed and that a number are very far on in the process. It's unbelievable."

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By Frank Urquhart

How the Nimrod fiasco spelt doom for RAF Kinloss