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You keep saying this: "and that sense of desperately trying to catch-up after being left behind" but I have never seen any evidence that this was the case. As pointed out before UK ORs were written against perceived operational needs; sometimes those were far beyond fiscal resources and were never anymore than paper exercises (e.g. NIGS, PT.428), sometimes they were technically well executed but fell foul of other factors (Blue Water), other times they were runaway successes (Rapier, Blowpipe).There are multiple reasons for programme failure, even "over ambition" has multiple fathers - failure to understand technology maturity, imposing platform constraints early, poor cost prediction etc. When one actually looks at these programmes in detail and examines the archive documents it rapidly becomes apparent that such sweeping statements as "trying to do more than the UK could actually pull off at their respective times" are rarely true. You repeatedly mention Nimrod AEW3, this seems to have one of those spectacular blow-ups in which nobody comes out blameless and every conceivable error was made- underestimating the required computing power, specifying an airframe that was too small, requirements creep (according to GEC), etc. Does that mean the UK could not develop its own AEW aircraft? Of course it doesn't, it just means that programme was executed terribly.
You keep saying this: "and that sense of desperately trying to catch-up after being left behind" but I have never seen any evidence that this was the case. As pointed out before UK ORs were written against perceived operational needs; sometimes those were far beyond fiscal resources and were never anymore than paper exercises (e.g. NIGS, PT.428), sometimes they were technically well executed but fell foul of other factors (Blue Water), other times they were runaway successes (Rapier, Blowpipe).
There are multiple reasons for programme failure, even "over ambition" has multiple fathers - failure to understand technology maturity, imposing platform constraints early, poor cost prediction etc. When one actually looks at these programmes in detail and examines the archive documents it rapidly becomes apparent that such sweeping statements as "trying to do more than the UK could actually pull off at their respective times" are rarely true. You repeatedly mention Nimrod AEW3, this seems to have one of those spectacular blow-ups in which nobody comes out blameless and every conceivable error was made- underestimating the required computing power, specifying an airframe that was too small, requirements creep (according to GEC), etc. Does that mean the UK could not develop its own AEW aircraft? Of course it doesn't, it just means that programme was executed terribly.
