Abandoning a multimillion-pound stealth jumpjet in India isn't a good look

Telegraph

05-07-2025

Shipborne aviation is a tricky business even in peacetime. Landing a helicopter, even though it can hover, on a ship, is by no means simple – especially if it's not a big ship. In my old life, watching a 13-ton Merlin helicopter land on a heaving frigate flight deck at night, with literally feet to spare between the rotors and the hangar, made me glad the pilot got paid more. Landing a fixed wing jet, even if it's an F-35B and does also have a limited ability to hover, on a ship, is always very difficult and involves quite a lot of danger.
Even the US Navy, masters of all things carrier aviation, can still learn the hard way. A US carrier recently made a hard turn under missile attack in the Red Sea. An F-18 was being towed by tractor on deck, with sailors driving both the tractor and the jet: as the ship heeled, both began skidding unstoppably towards the deck edge. The sailors managed to jump out, but the fighter and the tractor both went into the sea. This stuff is hard.
My feeling of being glad the aircrew get paid more didn't last. In too many cases it isn't true over time: aviators and mine clearance divers in the Royal Navy, both of which groups receive extra pay, both have the same joke.
'We don't get paid more, we just get paid faster.'
If the weather is really bad, even at a normal air base or airport ashore, things get worse. If you're trying to land that helicopter or fixed wing jet in bad weather at sea, they get hugely worse as the thing you are trying to land on is rocking and rolling and the deck is wet and slippery. It's much worse still at night.
This was the situation now more than two weeks ago, when a pilot from 809 Naval Air Squadron was attempting to get an F-35B fifth generation stealth fighter back aboard the carrier HMS Prince of Wales. The weather was simply too bad, and – as is not unheard of in peacetime naval aviation – the decision was taken for the jet to divert to an airfield ashore. Ships may send out their aircraft without any diversion option – often there is simply no friendly place to land, for instance during pretty much the whole of the Falklands campaign – but especially in peacetime we try to have a backup plan.
The F-35B got on the ground safely at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala on the southwestern tip of India. But it then developed a fault which is yet to be fixed, and the jet is still sitting there, cutting an increasingly forlorn figure. It's now been long enough for the 'you can't park there mate' quips to have been and gone, replaced with memes from the local tourism industry about why 'Kerala is such an amazing place, I don't want to leave'.
This situation doesn't really surprise me. Two things always got my particular attention in my old life during the rigorous pre-flight briefings. As captain of the ship, I was the man who decided go or no-go.
The first thing I didn't like was if there was no diversion-to-shore option. The second second was if the aircraft was going to have to shut down once feet-dry (ashore). There isn't a huge amount you can do about the first other than keep a beady eye on the weather forecast and make sure the deck remains clear throughout, but the second one always made me nervous. In my mid-career we had a Lynx helicopter, a small and usually reliable aircraft. But it didn't like starting up on someone else's patch. Wherever possible the pilot would keep the engine running, perhaps for a long time, so as not to take the risk of winding up stuck ashore.
Planning and executing sorties from sea is therefore something that needs to be practiced until you are blue in the face, then practiced some more. It's one of the reasons that HMS Prince of Wales, her escorts and some 4,500 people are far away doing what they do. You can only simulate, wargame and train so much; eventually you have to get to sea and pressure test all the moving parts for real. Doing it at distance from the UK teaches lessons too. It's the only way you can learn and then build in resilience for combat operations.
Hopefully all this paints a picture as to why this F-35 is now stuck in Kerala. Jets are not cars – they are complex and they break down. Sometimes they can't be fixed with what you have on the ship, or what you can fly ashore in a helicopter.
In this case, it sounds like the jet developed a hydraulic issue of some sort. I'm not a pilot but I have been around maritime aviation long enough to know this is a defect that rarely ends well. We will need the investigation to know for sure why that jet went 'feet dry' and why it is still not returned either to the ship or the UK. The safety of the aircraft and pilot would have trumped potential embarrassment or politics. And with Kerala within range, they took the decision to land there.
On landing and since then, the Indian authorities have been providing first class support where needed and perimeter security. Conspiracy theories that they could reverse engineer the technology are incorrect and the jet is safe. Having said all that, our international relations with India are complicated just now. There is always a political element to these things.
Personally, I would have moved heaven and earth to get that plane fixed and either back to the ship or back to the UK, for three reasons. First, it minimises embarrassment which is there, no matter how we wish it wasn't. Second, it reduces our dependence on India, which will always come with a political price-tag. Third, and most importantly, because we should train as we mean to fight. We should have simulated needing that jet for combat tasking right away and pressure tested every system, including the Treasury, to make it so. I would have also communicated loud and clear what the plan was to minimise both doubt and further embarrassment. Instead there has been silence from the British government.
For me it feels as though we have not been aggressive enough in the rectification of the jet or at least its removal from India.
On the plus side, none of this is new.
In 1983, a Sea Harrier pilot operating off Portugal found himself unable to locate HMS Illustrious and then got so low on fuel that landing ashore was no longer an option. Rather than eject and lose the aircraft, the pilot decided to land on the container ship Alraigo, with or without their permission. The landing was good, though the Harrier did slide backwards off the container it was on, suffering some damage. Red faces and salvage claims swiftly followed, though it should be noted that the jet returned to service and was later converted to the FA2 standard.
Aviation emergencies at sea are not new and they are always complex, expensive and occasionally embarrassing. This one in India is no different.