3 days ago
As HMS Prince of Wales cruises the Pacific, it's time to take a look at our Carrier Air
There have been two developments this month that concern the future of Royal Navy carrier-borne aviation, one negative and one positive. The negative one was the National Audit Office's report on the UK's F-35 capability. The second was the positive progress on uncrewed systems to operate from our two aircraft carriers.
In the NAO report on the F-35, there are some positives. It's a good jet, 'many times more able to survive and successfully deliver attacks than previous UK aircraft.' It starts looking less positive when current capabilities are compared to various MoD targets. 'Approximately one third of the fleet was available to perform all required missions in 2024'. 'Approximately half were available to perform at least one of seven possible missions'.
The current carrier strike group deployment has forced the issues with lack of engineers into the spotlight whilst the lack of global spares was rather embarrassingly exposed during the same deployment by the jet stranded in India recently.
The delivery forecast is grim and costs are high. So far we have received 38 jets and spent $11bn, giving a rough figure of £289m per jet. That sounds very shocking, and indeed it is, but we should remember that the RAF's 90-odd flyable Typhoons cost us something like £35bn in today's money to acquire – a nose-bleeding £388m per jet. And they are fourth generation, whereas the F-35 is a modern fifth generation fighter. So it could be worse.
