John Halliwell wrote:

Nimrod carries Sidewinders, does that make it a fighter?

Speaking of Nimrod "disaster", see below:

"The interesting aspect of the market was the very high barriers to
entry. The U.K., which had been using Shackleton BOMBERS
[emphasis mine] equipped with surplus Fairey Gannett radars for
AEW, wished to avoid a multibillion-dollar acquisition of modern U.S.
replacements. The U.K. tried to develop its own system, based on
the Comet jetliner. The Nimrod AEW.3 was an unmitigated disaster
and inevitably led to a U.K. acquisition of seven E-3s in 1986. This
was the only concerted effort to develop an alternative to the two
dominant U.S. systems."

[Aerospace America May 2001]

-Mike Marron