Nimrod MRA4

The Nimrod MRA4 was a British maritime patrol and attack aircraft project meant to replace the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR2 by rebuilding existing airframes. British Aerospace proposed it in the 1990s as the Nimrod 2000 and, in July 1996, was awarded a contract worth about two billion pounds to produce it. The rebuild paired refurbished MR2 fuselages with a new, larger wing and four Rolls-Royce BR710 turbofans in place of the original Spey engines, and it added a glass cockpit derived from Airbus airliners and new mission systems. Development was hit by cost overruns and by fuselages that had not been built to a common standard, and the planned fleet fell from twenty-one aircraft to nine. The first development aircraft flew on 26 August 2004. The UK government cancelled the programme on 19 October 2010 in its Strategic Defence and Security Review, and the remaining airframes were scrapped from January 2011.