§ Mr. Steelasked the Secretary of State for Defence what was the cost of the Tornado programme in real terms and as a proportion of the defence procurement budget when it was at the same state of development as the Trident programme is now.
§ Mr. Pattie[pursuant to his answer, 28 June 1984, c. 487–88]: It is not possible to identify a point in the Tornado programme which corresponds with the present state of development of Trident because of the disparate natures of the two projects and their differing methods of procurement. Whereas Tornado was a completely new aircraft, developed and produced on a tri-national collaborative basis, the responsibility and risk for the development of the Trident D5 missile system, which is an evolutionary development of the existing C4 system, is being borne wholly by the United States with the United Kingdom developing the warheads and submarines. Moreover, the Tornado programme consisted of two variants, the development of which started some five years apart. There is, thus, no appropriate basis for the calculations requested.