A major financial fiasco was the development of the BAe Nimrod AEW3 in the early to mid 1980's. An enormous amount of money was spent on aircraft that never would reach an active status. There were problems with weak computers (only with 1 ! MB memory), overloading the systems. Another major problem was the enormous amount of heat generated by all the electronic systems when operating the radar and other systems at full power. This was a real problem, because the fuel system was used as a 'heat-sink' and to be able to dissipate the heat generated when the MSA and radar operated at full power, the fuel tanks needed to be at least half full... The use of elderly airframes to reduce costs didn't help either. What was left of the project costing £1 billion? A few airframes that were scrapped, like this AEW3 XV261 and XV286 in the back at Abingdon. Both are already stripped and await the scrapman.