Dramatic new images show a powerful array of British F-35B Lightning jets lined up across the deck of HMS Prince of Wales as the UK Carrier Strike Group arrived in Singapore on 23 June.
The imagery was captured by Leading Photographer James Clarke and AS1 Amber Mayall, and is © Crown copyright 2025.
The aircraft, from 617 Squadron and 809 Naval Air Squadron, were arrayed in formation as the carrier entered harbour, marking a key milestone in Operation Highmast—this year’s flagship Royal Navy deployment.
The scene offers a rare glimpse of Britain’s fifth-generation air power at sea, with the deck display highlighting the UK’s ability to deploy two fully operational F-35B squadrons from a single aircraft carrier. The stop in Singapore also coincides with the 60th anniversary of UK–Singapore diplomatic relations.
Led by HMS Prince of Wales, the Carrier Strike Group includes ships, submarines, and aircraft from more than a dozen nations. The eight-month deployment will see UK forces travel through the Mediterranean and Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, conducting large-scale exercises with allies such as Japan and Australia.
The aircraft arrayed on HMS Prince of Wales are not just for show—they are part of an operationally ready, joint strike force, capable of delivering precision air power wherever it is needed.
The deployment also marks the first operational outing for 809 NAS since its reformation, operating alongside 617 Squadron to form the backbone of the UK’s carrier strike air wing. Together, the two squadrons reflect full operating capability for the UK’s Lightning Force at sea.
Over 4,500 UK personnel are involved in Operation Highmast, including 2,500 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines, 900 British Army troops, and nearly 600 RAF personnel. The mission aims to demonstrate deterrence, deepen military partnerships, and reinforce the UK’s long-term commitment to Indo-Pacific security.
Has there been anymore decelopment on getting the stranded F35 out of India?
Yes, Deliveroo will be delivering between 6-6.15pm friday and we get free Bombay Potatoes.
😆
Brilliant!
I thought Evri left it with a neighbour?
Fantastic to see we have a 50% peacetime load on show.
What ?
PoW had 40 airframes embarked at one point, when there was 24 F35Bs to achieve FOC. Likely 6-8 F35Bs have returned to Marham but that would still be over 30 in the airwing.
14 F35’s on show here, It was 8 UK F35b’s in the CSG you refer to. Still, It’s nice to see a mix of Fixed and Rotary giving @ 50% of designed peacetime capabilitry nearly 9 years since QE sea trials.
Looks like a pause on B deliveries for a few years now.
Hiya, I’m not referring to CSG21 at all (where we had 8 F35Bs and USMC had 10). I’m referring to THIS deployment – there were 24 F35Bs for the Med exercises at least, as this number was the defined amount to achieve Full Operating Capability for the type – which was a stated goal of Op Highmast. Yes, it is a slow build but they are getting there and funding’s been tight. The original goal for 24 at sea was 2024 so only a 1yr slip.
As for F35B purchases, Tranche 2 is for 27 units. As announced today, 12 of those will now be F35As, so the RN/RAF will still get 15 more F35Bs for a total of 62.
Hiya, not seen this figure of 24 yet (neither the “At least” 24 ((assumed that “at least” still means, “more than” ?), often seen it mentioned as the total for this trip, happy to learn that 24 have been embarked, shame it wasn’t shown on here (unless I missed it, which is entirely possible given that I’m not on here that much).
Any Idea when the “Full” designed and built for load might happen ?
So 12 of the F35B’s have been paused (put on hold), as I said ?
Anyway, hello, you new here ?
I bet all 27 will be F-35A’s
From the RAF website:
“As part of the second phase procurement plans of 27 aircraft, we will purchase a combination of twelve F-35A and fifteen F-35B variants, with options on further purchases examined in the Defence Investment Plan. The UK has a declared headmark of 138 aircraft through the life of the F-35 programme.
Day-to-day, the F-35As will be used in a training role on 207 Squadron, the Operational Conversion Unit (OCU). As the F-35A carries more fuel than the F-35B variant, it can stay airborne for longer, extending the available training time in each sortie for student pilots. As F-35As also require fewer maintenance hours, there will be increased aircraft availability on the OCU. These factors combined will improve pilot training and reduce the amount of time for pilots to reach the front-line squadrons.
The F-35A will complement the existing F-35B, offering a family of strike aircraft that significantly reduces life-cycle costs, meets operational requirements, and improves F-35 Force Generation for Carrier Strike operations.
Designed to operate from conventional runways, the F-35A offers increased range, increased payloads, and increased agility. The new fast jets will be based at RAF Marham and support the stand-up of a third front line F-35 Lightning Squadron. “
@BobA – very interesting, thanks for the share. Given all that was said about the differences between versions, plus the fact you cannot conduct STOVL with the A, I found it hard to believe the A would be used as OCU for both had you not shared that.
The QE has not operated with 24 F-35Bs onboard to date, as others have noted.
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The PoW (17 presently*) has yet to operate with the 24 F-35Bs earlier statements reported on. If the 6 aircraft required to meet 24 is for the Far East leg of the deployment, they would need to play tag with the (18th*) aircraft holidaying in India presently (with some reports today reporting this aircraft will be moved to a hanger, with all its security/spying implications); exercise Talisman Sabre would be the logical point of the deployment to operate the larger F-35B complement, and there have no reports to this effect (yet).
After seeing what Israel’s small F35 force did to Iran we can really see just how powerful the Queen Elizabeth class are. Even more so once SPEAR and Meteor make their way onboard. A modest buy of LRASM and the addition of MQ9 AEW and MPA and these vessels will be a force to be reckoned with for the next 40 years.
That’s the primary problem. No standoff attack capability as the buggering LM haven’t upgraded the software for the UK F35Bs to deploy the best weapons in the UK arsenal. Now not happening until sometime after 25,500 AD
It’s actually becoming more than an embarrassment for LM, it’s actually becoming a national security problem for many countries. Countries like USA, UK, Australia, Japan are not single fighter militaries. Others are not so lucky. Meteor, JSM etc etc. BAE pay attention.
LM being embarrassed? Unlikely, the CEO is probably more worried about his stock options and meeting investors’ expectations at each of the quarterly financial performance reviews than delivering anything their actual customers would want.
I have no idea how we can force LM’s hand and get them to do what we need them to do. We have really let ourselves down by believing that US corporates have the best interests of their customers (never mind allies!) at heart.
We mustn’t do this kind of thing again (but we probably will, as we seem to be besotted with America and its overly expensive kit).
How much of this delay is deliberate to allow the maturity of US weapons? If you delay Meteor integration until it is no-longer world beating, nobody will buy it.
I won’t accept that this mentality isn’t playing some part.
so there are “Over 4,500 UK personnel are involved in Operation Highmast, including 2,500 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines, 900 British Army troops, and nearly 600 RAF personnel”. By my maths, that means there are 500 other UK personnel. 60-100 of these will be RFA, who are the others?
Civil service?
That I think would be the ‘sanitised’ answer.
Ashore in UK probably.
The flag officers and Admirals
MIB.
This does show that the massive investment has paid off.. but there needs to be a bit of a final push.. three squadrons of F35b, long range precision munitions and a replacement AEW system.. considering what has been spent so far it’s not a big push through..so let’s have it.
I agree. It wouldn’t be a ha’porth of tar exactly, but well worth it nontheless.
Scuttlebutt has it that Starmer is going to annouce today that we are order 12 F35 A, potentially to carry free fall nukes.
Just announced 12 F35As will be ordered. Single squadron. That’s much less than the RAF probably hoped for.
I think a typhoon order is coming especially with the announcement last week from Euro fighter stating many hundreds more aircraft are about to be ordered and production will go back upto +30 aircraft/ year. The F35As will be held as a small strike force for nuclear delivery.
Re Typhoons, that would be excellent and very welcome news
With such a small buy, it’s tricky to see them being used for much else really isn’t it? You couldn’t risk attrition of the only force capable of delivering tactical nuclear weapons so they would have to be held back surely, which makes them something of a one trick pony?
Apparently they’re going to the OCU. Do training only until TACO has a stroke and someone else authorises the RAF to drop an American bomb for them.
It’s been confirmed by the EF consortium there will be no UK typhoon order.
They are not in any discussion with the HMG nor do they have any expectation
The headlines say “capable of dropping US free fall nukes” Great. Nevertheless, I am confident, even if it is denied with weasel words, that Aldermaston has a project team developing a bespoke tactical nuke “with a bloody union jack” on it.
With a couple of extra fixtures on top so it can be fixed to F35Bs, and Typhoons, should a pressing need arise!
Isn’t AWE designing and building a new warhead? I’ve assumed that it’s meant as an upgrade for Trident (though I have no idea why we need to upgrade the current warheads) but it may be intended for both strategic and tactical roles?
Yep, lovely to see. FLY NAVY 🇬🇧🙃🕳️ Btth.
The real military aviators of the UK.
Ha, they’ve even got 007 in on the act.🛫🇬🇧🙃 btth
Just dont let someone fly a few drones over that. I know it is protected, but you get the point.
I would be more worried about someone on an E-scooter 😂
The header photo is an extremely poor fake! You need to pull it.
Whoever make the image doesn’t appear to know that Lightnings have twin vertical tails and don’t have folding wings. And as for the tinfoil cockpits…
…those aren’t folding wings, it’s the other vertical tail mate.
That wasn’t serious, think it was humour, well at least that’s how I read it, probably wrong though.
You’re not serious? So you think one fin is further forward than the other and a completely different shape? I despair!
I can iderstand what you ate saying however I think its a trick of th3 perspective of the camera (maybe a wide angle lens?) If toh lookth3 jets are stilghtly angled towards the camera and the darker fin with the lightning stike decal is the fin nearest the camera ..the other fin is furthest away.If you look at th3 plane at the far end of the deck that’s what It looks like to me anyway…but yes it does.look an odd photo.
Forgive my typos : Thick thumbs on a small mobile..hopefully you can decipher it.
original uncropped image can be found on defence imagery. Once you can see the whole of the front aircraft the perspective trickery goes away and you can understand the orientation and why the tail fins appear to be different sizes
Honestly, I’m starting to wonder whether I’m seeing a different image to everyone else! It’s either that or you’re all blind.
Granted, it looks bizzare, Glenn.
But I have seen the same photograph on Twitter, taken by a RN POT, that shows the full view, this has been cropped.
In the wider view the whole of the front aircraft is in shot, and that clearly makes sense of the weird looking angles of the twin tails, which those verticals are.
I’ve seen an uncrossed version of the same photo and I was shocked. Somehow the perspective made sense in a way that this one just didn’t to my poor brain. My sincerest apologies to UKDJ and everyone who tried to point out the bloody obvious to an old fool.
@Glenn.
Nonsense, you’re nothing of the sort.
It does indeed look bizzare, and it is weird how it makes sense in the full photo!
Umm, Nurse! 😂🇬🇧🕳️btth.
The tails are not vehicle there are two control surfaces which angle out at perhaps 30 degrees from vertical and which coupled with directionally steered output from the engine provide the aircraft with a lot of control.
The angles mean that it’s very unlikely to return a useful radar reflection to an adversary aircraft or missile system.
I… don’t know what to say here.
Very impressive & still room for plenty more! Also, great to see one of my relatives has taken the pics 📸
only good enough to threaten tin-pot country dictators, and they’ll never take of in combat except under the direction of the USA
Just read an article that the UK are going to buy 12 f-35A’s has anyone read anything that would support that??
Yes UKDJ has an article from this morning on it. Confirmed by multiple sources including BBC.
From the RAF website:
“As part of the second phase procurement plans of 27 aircraft, we will purchase a combination of twelve F-35A and fifteen F-35B variants, with options on further purchases examined in the Defence Investment Plan. The UK has a declared headmark of 138 aircraft through the life of the F-35 programme.
Day-to-day, the F-35As will be used in a training role on 207 Squadron, the Operational Conversion Unit (OCU). As the F-35A carries more fuel than the F-35B variant, it can stay airborne for longer, extending the available training time in each sortie for student pilots. As F-35As also require fewer maintenance hours, there will be increased aircraft availability on the OCU. These factors combined will improve pilot training and reduce the amount of time for pilots to reach the front-line squadrons.
The F-35A will complement the existing F-35B, offering a family of strike aircraft that significantly reduces life-cycle costs, meets operational requirements, and improves F-35 Force Generation for Carrier Strike operations.
Designed to operate from conventional runways, the F-35A offers increased range, increased payloads, and increased agility. The new fast jets will be based at RAF Marham and support the stand-up of a third front line F-35 Lightning Squadron. “
So in what circumstances would we use tac nukes via F35A?
Maybe I’m thick, but once any nukes are used it’s MAD PDQ & we already have enough Tridents to make most of Russia barely habitable.
Wouldn’t we be better spending the money on conventional forces?
Putting too much into nukes, leaving conventional forces sparse only encourages the likes of Rusia who see us left with little other than all or nothing nuke response.
As NATO demands.
Remember, in the later Cold War we also had duel use, US nukes with Lance, used by a Regiment of the Army in BAOR, and nuclear Depth Charges stored at Macrihanish and St Mawgan.
This is not a new thing.
Compared to US carrier air wings our carrier air component is minuscule. We need to get serious and double what we have now.
Looks impressive….. but is that not the entire UK fleet of F35’s?