The UK Defence Secretary John Healey remained tight-lipped on what the mixed-variant F-35 Lightning fleet will seem like throughout a Defence Committee listening to on 2 July 2025.
He solely intimated that the 12 F-35A standard take-off and touchdown plane that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it deliberate to order final week will “begin being delivered earlier than the top of the last decade,” leaving open the prospect that the multirole plane will begin to be delivered from 2029 on the newest.
Likewise, Healey maitained that there isn’t any mounted timeline for the supply of the complete fleet of 138 deliberate plane, neither is there a exact stability set out between the As and the Bs.
With no definitive timeline, the course of the UK’s future fight air functionality is shrouded in thriller and thus past scrutiny. After ten months of ready for priorities within the Strategic Defence Evaluation, published at the beginning of June, the Defence Secretary mentioned that the Committee must wait a number of extra months for specifics to come back within the Defence Funding Plan within the autumn.
This uncertainty comes at a time when some defence specialists anticipate a conflict between Russia and Nato by 2028.
Because it stands
Presently, the UK solely function 37 items of the B variant – the quick take-off and vertical touchdown plane primarily based at RAF Marham in Norfolk – collectively operated between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Drive (RAF).
Final week, when the MoD introduced the deliberate procurement of the A variant in the course of the Nato Summit, the federal government emphasised the nuclear function the plane will deliver to the RAF, a functionality that the B variant lacks.
When requested concerning the potential discount within the British industrial contribution to F-35 with the number of the A variant, Healey specified that “it could be broadly related” to that of the B variant, including that that is topic to negotiations. Nonetheless, “the price of the As might be round 20% lower than the Bs.”
Nevertheless, one other committee member, Calvin Bailey, pointed to Rolls-Royce’s work in supplying the elevate fan for the vertical take-off functionality of the B variant, one thing a standard take-off A variant lacks.
