The Editor,
The Times
26 January 2011.

Sir

Your item on page 4 about the destruction of the brand new Nimrod MR4 reconnaissance aircraft describes in a small paragraph the most outstanding and idiotic vandalism of the whole destructive range of defence cuts. These aircraft are brand new and, at last, ready to go. Their excessive cost has already been paid . Nimrod MR4 is considered to be the most advanced long-range anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft in the world, with the most modern equipment for the detection and destruction of submarines. Now instead of operating them we are buying the most expensive scrap in the world: £4 billion worth. Without them, protection of our own deterrent submarines, surveillance of our coasts, detection of increasingly intrusive Russian probing, long range rescue and other functions will simply disappear – a unique deficiency among maritime nations. The statement in the defence review that ‘other assets’ will perform those tasks is straightforwardly false. There are, and will be, no such assets. If we cannot afford to operate them at present – which I do not believe – then at least they should be mothballed until the economy recovers, like other assets about to be destroyed. As it is, truly, as Mr Hamilton of Unite remarked ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’.

Yours faithfully,

David Coleman