The Ministry of Defence expects it will take three to four years to resolve the engineer shortages affecting the UK’s F-35 programme, according to statements made in response to Parliamentary questions.
Ben Obese-Jecty MP asked the Ministry of Defence what steps were being taken, and how long it would take, to address the shortfall identified in the Public Accounts Committee’s report ‘The UK’s F-35 stealth fighter capability’.
The committee found that engineering gaps had become a major constraint on aircraft availability and output.
Defence minister Luke Pollard said the Ministry of Defence has “increased its recruitment of engineers significantly in the last two years”, including through joining bonuses and expanded training capacity to accelerate the pipeline. He added that the RAF has introduced a Financial Retention Incentive to slow the outflow of experienced personnel.
Pollard acknowledged that the shortages are a recognised problem inside the F-35 enterprise. He said it will take “three or four years” to reach required staffing levels because of the time needed to train new engineers.
The Public Accounts Committee reported that the MoD had previously misjudged how many engineers the F-35 programme required. It described engineering shortages as one of the main reasons why F-35 availability was “poor” and consistently below departmental targets in 2024 and early 2025.
Pollard said the Ministry of Defence will respond formally to the committee’s recommendations through the Treasury Minute process. He noted that recruitment and retention remain “one of the top two priorities for the Chief of the Defence Staff.”
Maybe we should slow the deliveries down ?
We do not have enough fast jets as is
Which begs the question where will the ground crew come from to look after Tempest.
Hope the mandarins at white have a cunning plan.
(it was sarcasm)
That’s mental, World War II was won in less time that it takes the MoD to recruit and train enough engineers for 48 air planes.
Imagine if our current crop of geniuses were in changer in 1940 😀
The most capable fast jet the UK has ever operated. Let down by politicians.
To be totally fair: ably assisted by LM not delivering on anything to time or budget!
LM has slowed deliveries at the UK’s request, or lack of funds.
I was referring to LM’s, lack of, delivery of various updates and integrations
it seems to be a mystery if the weapons integration delays are due to LM, the MOD or both of them
The weapons integration delays are hitting all customers not just UK.
The whole issue is the Tech Refresh (hardware) which is needed for the Blk4 software to run. As I am sure you can imagine the oroiona design freeze was 00’s so the computational systems on board would have been 90’s vintage MISPEC. That needs to be updated but needs to be robust for EM/EW resistant and reliable – not so easy and then it has to take the new software reliably. Add to that software soup of something that was likely architected, as we would probably say today, wrongly. But that somehow has to be revered to consolidate things.
Chris, nothing to do with money. We’ve ordered 48 a long time ago. Maybe we asked for slowed delivery so that we can get block 4 software.
I wonder if having to go to sea is having an effect.
It was always the plan.
In fact, It was always the plan to have a full load avaliability (when Initially designing these two huge carriers) But two decades ago was a long time and the results are, as always, woefully wide of the Intention.
We are praising the fact that 24 are now embarked (Scraped together leaving virtually none left) yet It is 8 years since QE was comissioned.
One Carrieer, all the eggs.
My comment below/above.
Hi half, our carriers have 4 roles and the load-out of F-35Bs will depend on the role engaged upon and the threat. A full load of jet aircraft is not a feature of every operational deployment. Given that the carrier programme is a UK national programme and the F-35 programme is a multi-national US-led programme, it is not surprising that two such different programmes were never going to be in perfect sync, however the build rate has been very slow in certain years, some years only 2 being delivered against a target of 7 – very peculiar why a Tier 1 partner such as ourselves has been so badly served by Lockheed Martin, unless MoD requested slow delivery in certain years.
I was on about not having enough engineers. I suspect that the light blue jobs do not join to be dark blue jobs
I was merely pointing out that this program has been ongoing for many years so planning and recruitment problems should not be a thing.
Not enough aircraft, not enough engineers, not enough urgency/care.