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Consultants were paid £1.1 million to help axe Britain’s fleet of Harrier jump jets and then sell them to America, it emerged today.

The Ministry of Defence was criticised for a “ludicrous waste” of money on outside help, at a time when thousands of troops are being cut.

MPs said it was “extraordinary” that private firms were profiting from helping to slash the defence budget, arguing the job could be done by the department’s own staff. The 74 Harriers were retired eight years early as part of 2010′s defence review. But last year 72 were sold to the US military, who compared them to cars with just 15,000 miles on the clock.

The £1.1 million would pay the annual salaries of 58 entry-level soldiers. The expenditure was revealed only days after the MoD announced that 4,200 troops would be axed this year.

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy argued the cash could be better spent protecting jobs or equipment, adding: “People will find it extraordinary that private consultants are being paid to help slash the defence budget.

“Ministers must explain why others are profiting from decisions which have seen thousands made redundant and Britain left without an aircraft carrier with aircraft for a decade.”

Defence select committee member Madeleine Moon, who uncovered the spending through parliamentary questions, said she was “appalled” while Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a former Army officer, raised concerns about a “consultancy culture” at the MoD.

Defence equipment minister Peter Luff insisted £1 billion was being saved by removing the Harrier from service and selling the jets to the US for £110 million. The decision formed part of government efforts to plug a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget which saw tens of thousands of job losses announced and major equipment programmes cut.

The MoD said Alix Partners had been paid the £1.1 million as part of a wider contract to help deliver savings in the department. Last year it emerged the firm was being paid £3,950 a day.

An official stressed the yearly consultancy bill had fallen from £261 million to £26 million under the Coalition. A spokesman said it had been a “difficult but necessary decision” to axe Harrier. The MoD was investing in “modern, cutting-edge aircraft for the future”.

Read more on the Evening Standard website

Aeroplanes can fly because their wings cause the air pressure underneath to be greater than that above, lifting them into the air. But engineers have for years been frustrated by a theory which wrongly explains what causes the change in pressure to occur.

The myth is commonly found in school textbooks and aeroplane flight manuals, and is so widely believed that even Einstein was rumoured to subscribe to it. Now a Cambridge scientist has become so fed up with the bogus explanation that he has created a minute-long video to lay it to rest once and for all. The video, published on YouTube by Prof Holger Babinsky of the university’s engineering department, seeks to explain in simple terms why the myth goes against the laws of physics.

According to conventional wisdom the pressure change happens because the air on the curved upper surface of the wing has further to travel than that below the flat underneath surface, meaning it must travel faster to arrive at the other side of the wing at the same time.

In fact the real explanation is nothing to do with the distance the air has to travel. The curvature of the wing causes the change in air pressure because it pulls some of the air upwards, which reduces pressure, and forces the rest beneath it, creating higher pressure.

A law known as the Bernoulli equation means that when pressure is lower, air moves faster – so the air stream above the wing does move more quickly than the one below, but this is not what causes the difference in pressure.

Prof Babinsky proved his theory by filming smoke passing across a wing.

If traditional wisdom had been correct the smoke above and below the wing should have reached the front edge at the same time.

The video demonstrates that the explanation is fundamentally flawed because the plume above the wing reached the edge much sooner than the plume below.

If the distance the air had to travel was causing the pressure to change, then a boat’s sail – where the air travels the same distance on the inside and outside of the curve – would not work, Prof Babinsky said.

He added: “I don’t know when the explanation first surfaced but it’s been around for decades. You find it taught in textbooks, explained on television and even described in aircraft manuals for pilots.

“There is no law in physics which states when streams of particles start at the leading edge of the wing they should reach the tailing edge at the same time.

“I’ve even heard a story that Einstein drew a design for an aircraft wing with a long, squiggly line on top of an aerofoil to make the distance for the air to travel greater, but this would not work.”

Link to the Daily Telegraph story

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