Discussions with the F-35 Joint Program Office are ongoing regarding the procurement profiles and delivery schedule for Britain’s next batch of aircraft, according to a written answer published on Friday.
Luke Pollard, Minister of State for Defence Readiness and Industry, was responding to Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, who had asked whether negotiations with the multinational office had begun on the second tranche.
Mr Pollard said: “Discussions with the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) are ongoing regarding the procurement profiles and delivery schedule for the next batch of F-35 Lightning aircraft.”
Asked in a second question the same day whether an order for a further tranche would be placed before delivery of the next batch begins in the early 2030s, the minister referred back to an answer given in July, saying it remains extant.
That earlier reply, given to Stuart Anderson, the Conservative MP for South Shropshire, set out the position on numbers and timing. “The exact delivery profile and date of F-35 aircraft is subject to negotiation between the UK and multinational Joint Program Office, but the UK anticipates taking delivery of the next batch of F-35 aircraft from the early 2030s,” Mr Pollard said at the time.
The Joint Program Office manages the F-35 on behalf of all participating nations, running the contracting with Lockheed Martin as a single multinational effort rather than through separate national agreements. Partner countries place their requirements into a combined production schedule, and the office negotiates aircraft numbers, configuration and delivery slots across the whole programme.
A national decision on how many aircraft to buy and when they arrive cannot be settled unilaterally, because the slots available in any given production lot depend on what every other customer has ordered, and the aircraft are built to a common standard agreed across the partnership.
Are we still expecting a split batch between roughly 15 B’s and 12 A’s?
Yes.
Hiya Daniele – It’s a positive piece of news – in service date early 2030’s though . I sense another capability gap.
It is mate, but it’s old news repeated endlessly.
We need all As. Cheaper and more capable. Just not carrier capable which is not an issue as we seem unsmiling to put the vaunted carriers into harms way….
I’d cancel further procurements beyond a maximum of 63 F-35B. The aircraft is capable, but the funding for those F-35A is planned to be drawn from the nuclear funding pool, according to the DIP. That’s money that needs to be retained for an expensive (but necessary) nuclear submarine procurement drive in the future.
We are looking to fund both. According to the RAF the As are primarily type conversion with a seconday nuclear role. We need more Bs to build up the type fleet numbers and the Bs can be used by the RAF AND the FAA. That gives the UK greater flexibility. If the RN gets some refuelling drones their shorter legs would not be a problem.
I don’t see why the RAF should be able to crack into the DNE budget to fund these aircraft then, even less than I did before. If the nuclear role is secondary, why is this not coming out of the RAF procurement budget?
If the RAF want Tempest (as they should), stop hedging their bets with the F-35A.
The F-35A isn’t really for the nuclear role, thats the spin the Gov has put on to make it sound more palatable in thr media and to kill multiple birds with one stone in theory. The real reason is to clear the training nightmare that the B model is ill suited at, the maintenance hog that Bravo is having to then further spilt its active time between front line service and lengthy conversion training has been part of the reason availability has been so poor and we are struggling to get enough airmen qualified.
The A is a lot less complex and has a higher availability rate as a result. Having dedicated conversion jets will then allow the Bravos to be avaible for front line service in higher numbers. The multiple bonuses for the RAF, and the reason they want them, are that it gives them a platform they don’t have to share with the FAA and partially give up when the carriers deploy and it allows the RAF to on paper regain tatical nuclear strike – which with the first tranche of A’s i doubt we will see much of but it does give us an important nuclear escalatory option we haven’t had since the 1990’s if needed.
That’s great, and I appreciate the summary, but that’s not really my point.
If these 12 F-35A are not intended primarily as nuclear assets, why are they being funded from the DNE? The money should be going to the warheads and submarines.
As I said for a very long time this was about prizing open DNE to RAF and then RAF will discover they need about 72 Alphas to full fill a nuclear role.
All totally predictable.
The A was originally the promised version for the Tornado GR4 replacement, whilst the B was supposed to be the Jag and Harrier replacement, which then led to the FAA carrier requirement, which then flip flopped between the B and C versions. However, the Government (Cameron’s if I remember correctly) at the time decided to merge the Tornado replacement into the B version. Even though the B could not meet the RAF’s interdictor requirement.
I have a feeling that the RAF will ultimately gain more F35A above the current 12 projected, as this is what they were always after.
No doubt more A’s will follow. Almost inevitable. This initial batches priority though will more than likely be to help fix the Lightening pilot training fiasco and set up the ground work and supply chains for more to follow. The Gov still references the 138 number over the programme lifetime so I’d expect the A will make up much of the remaining force seeing as the B’s production will cease when USMC orders are fulfilled within the next 10 years or so.
Absolutely, rhe RAF is aiming for a Tempest/F35A High, Medium end mix, then transfer the Bs to the FAA, with a capable Loyal wingman to glue it all together.
I’m sure in the RAF’s ideal world, the Carriers and the F35B would be sold off.
What does it matter if the F-35As are being funded from the DNE budget? – it is there to cover all things nuclear, so why not the F-45A in its nuclear strike role?
Compared to the sheer financial horror of the DNE cost, the F-35A is just a rounding error. Do we even know that it is being funded from the DNE pile? The DNE budget over the next 4 years breaks down as:
* £47bn for submarines, maintenance and infrastructure
* £13bn on warhead development, including maintaining Trident and the design and production of its successor Astraea
* £1.7 bn on the nuclear fuels programme, which may refer to de-fuelling
* £290m to upgrading workforce skills
* £1.6 bn unspecified.
No mention of F-35A there, but at under £1bn for 12 of them, it wouldn’t make a lot of difference to the massive DNE budget of £63.6bn – which on paper is twice the entire procurement budget for all three services combined.l plus rotary plus weapons.
Because the F-35A isn’t being intended for the nuclear strike role primarily. It’s being billed as a training platform.
Currently, the RN draws on the DNE to fund direct nuclear programmes. Nuclear submarines, nuclear warheads, and the infrastructure.
That’s only going to get more pricey, and the RAF attempting to break open that ring-fenced pot of money, to fund what is apparently no longer intended as a nuclear strike aircraft, isn’t ideal. Fund the bombs, fund the infrastructure to house them; the aircraft themselves should be taken from the RAF budget.
It’s like the BA asking for access to the naval budget to fund the PrSM acquisition on the basis of them maybe getting an anti-ship option for the loadout in the future.
Yes a good sized F35B fleet for both carriers plus some decent backup if both were ever needed to be deployed at once and operated from other vessels like ATS’ and the RFAs.
With airborne refuelling, aren’t wing loaded fuel tanks being looked at for F35As, if so why not for Bs and even Cs?
It has never been the intention to have two operational carriers. The plan has always been and remains one operational, one reserve/maintenance. This because there are barely enough escorts, Merlins or crews to form one carrier strike group, nor is there currently an Astute or fleet replenishment ship to support the CSG.
There is certainly not the money to create a second F-35B wing to equip the second carrier. 30 F-35Bs in 5he carrier air wing means 60 in total, so a flyaway cost of close to £6bn and then we would have to recruit anadditional 45 pilots and ground crews. It is not going to happen! All those expensive, high-maintenance Bs are coming out of the RAF’s budget. If the money was available, the RAF would want to spend it on the more capable, lower maintenance, 30% cheaper A version, not more short-range, limited payload Bs.
There are more important defence priorities than having another carrier group of indeterminate wartime value.
I couldnt disagree more, Nato is not short of tje ability to drop a tactical nuke. What we are doing is sacrificing naval power for the ability to drop somebody elses bomb following somebody elses decision. It does not give us anything, we wont be able to drop a bomb in our own interests because we wont have a bomb to drop. The previous munitions were not dual key, these are. It is just an effort by a labour government to be “European”….at out expense
There are 13 new escorts on order and six being properly fixed.
F35B also has the fowards support role to army of Harrier.
The issue is there are not enough F35B to cover that and the various other roles it has.
The F35A doing nuclear is a clown show as we no longer have a freefall bomb of our own.
This adds a big fat nothing to our capabilities rather than maximising the carriers in the high North.
I thought unlike the Harriers, the F35 has much hotter exhaust meaning only specially coated flight decks can operate them. So they can’t land on any RFA or other warship handy when they like or need to.
No thanks, we’d rather have an aircraft that’s actually capable and not pretending to be Invisible because they bribe our senior ranks
‘pretending to be invisible’?
There are plenty of reasons to be discouraged form buying further F-35, but its capability is not the issue.
Its capabilities ARE the issue. First its not invisible not when it is tethered to a north american server for everything – a server hat today I have ZERO doubt is passing info direct to the russians. The radar signature as it flees battle because it has run out of petrol is somewhat huge. The yanks caneffectively ground them if the weather doesnt – and frankly more than overcast and its not going to fly.
Horseshit.
No one has ever claimed that the F-35 is invisible. The claim is that it is significantly harder to detect on radar than other fighters.
You have zero evidence of a Russian server tap.
The rear aspect is significantly stealthier than almost all modern fighters.
The Americans wouldn’t ground them, because it would have major repercussions.
The F-35 cannot fly in heavy lightning. Like most aircraft.
“F-35 cannot fly in heavy lightning.” -great pun Sir! 😁
yes, lol… 🙂
That is completely false…………
Do the F35 get a radar? Because the last 400 delivered did not (source GAO report 2025). When will they have to change their engine? The current one cannot operate the cooling system needed. What about the integration of meteor? Have they been able to operate from airfield in wartime environment? Since the range is short, it’s airfields are in range of ennemy fire…
Countrarily to the claims, capabilities of the F35 is the issue. Buying it mean putting a « horseshit » of money on a program managed as efficiently as the Sagrada Familia: good on mockup, but never ready.
« The Americans wouldn’t ground them, because it would have major repercussions. »
The Germans would not cross the Ardennes, Russia would not invade Ukraine, Irak has weapons of mass destructions… certainty is fun, till contradicted by brutal reality.
Of course its not invisible but the apparent greaat advantage is it is near invisible, unfortunately as I point out this is not the case from behind
Naturally I have no evidence – I cant exactly phone Putin and ask – even if I did it is unlikely he will go ‘yeah Dave, of course we have’. But we ALSO know that Trump is a pervert and paedophile and that he does absolutely anything and everything Putin asks – suggestive that he is right under Putins thumb, that being the case then I would have no belief in US denials that their servers have been breached either by Russian hackers or by an insider working for Trump/Putin. YOU certainly have no prof I am incrrect, same as the Germans lacked proof we had broken enigma when we had.
The reports on the back view suggest its radar profile is an arse the size of texas, of course the back of an aircraft is significantly harder to make stealthy but it doesnt mean someone shouldnt at least try
And this is a military aircraft, I expect it to be able to fly through the middle of a nuclear powered electromagnetic pulse, it is not a civilian craft.
I’d take money out of the welfare benefits system, stop all foreign aid, money spend on housing illegal immigrants and close hundreds of unnecessary quangos. That should provide more than sufficient funds to start, for the first time in decades to strengthen our armed forces in terms of personnel and equipment
Great, hammer the poor for the pittance they survive on. Why not go after the real money? All the billionaires who direct governments, hold national debts & benefit massively from charging all that interest on our loans, who ship off our industries to the far east, rake in fortunes from our privatised utilities, who oppose wage rises anything near inflation for most people, who offshore their wealth & dictate more austerity at every excuse to deprive the many of a properly run country & demand further cuts to our armed forces just so they can avoid being asked to pay their fair share.
Let’s get ours under way, the f35 relies on the yanks so I’d not useful in any way, we would do better to make harriers. The twat has apparently not given permission to use the north sea so we continue to bleed money for oil and gas abroad, we aren’t getting new submarine s so already we are being left toothless and defenceless in the face of the USA and russian federation as two enemies we will be fighting within the decade
Harriers are bordering on worthless at this point.
er, how do you come to that conclusion. OKJ, so they are slow, so what, the missiles actually shoot things down, the plane is just a platform for the missiles to launch from . The Harrier can take off and land vertically as well so when our airfields are toast we can still use them. The harrier also proved itself to be rugged and useable from small aircraft carriers and other ships.
1) The plane is slow, and therefore the missiles it launches will have shorter ranges, lower P(K), smaller no-escape zones, et cetera.
2) The plane has nothing in the way of LO; in fact, those gaping forward intakes probably make it significantly more detectable than equivalent aircraft.
3) It has incredibly short legs, even for a short take-off/vertical landing aircraft.
4) Its sensor array is old, and the power it can generate into those sensors is limited.
5) When operating from austere environments in a VTOL configuration, its payload is miniscule.
6) You know what else operates from small aircraft carriers, is equipped for STOVL operations, and is significantly more capable than the Harrier in every useful metric…the F-35B Lightning.
When it is not in maintenance of course. And the sensor gap only exists when F35 have radar, the last 400 have dead load instead.
The plane is slow but the missiles have sufficient range, ask the Argentinians. If the missiles need more ange make them a tad bigger and let them carry more fuel. Its not difficult.
The F35 is far from a small radar footprint either, it has to return to base and then it has an arse the size of texas. The Harrier at least doesnt have huge flaps opening and closing on it n order to hover and can actually do some fairly interesting manouvers the f35 cnt possibly do, more over it does the vertical stuff without the need for special gearboxes and fans it does it courtesy of a couple of lengths of bowden cable.
If you are building new ones – and we would have to – then build them with some more fuel onboard – like the missiles – but of course the harrier has proven it can operate from small aircraft carriers and provide the range needed to win a war
The sensor array is old, again we are going to build new ones so build a new senor array, and modern sensor arrays tend to need less power – but why not look at uprating the engine
The payload is bi enough – again, look at the power from a more modern engine while building new harriers,
The lightening is like all American stuff, a lot of mouth and no trousers, give it a little bit of rain and it hides in its shelter.
Oil from the North Sea (what’s remaining of our part anyway) will do nothing to affect the price of oil for the UK because it’s priced against the global market
This is why it is in our national interests to focus on mitigating global impacts by being less dependent on oil – still in the mix because it’s needed for things that aren’t a energy generation – but ultimately less dependent. The Mix is the important bit, that’s what people overlook conveniently
I would actually enjoy better well thought arguments against it not pure waffle as I’m sure it’s not perfect
Did I say that it would make things cheaper for us? What I pointed out is that we continue to bleed money abroad for the oil and gas we still need. It would be like you having two kids at home, both capable of washing our car and you deciding to pay the neighbours kids to wash your car – it would be total and utter stupidity. We need to stop spending money abroad for things we can do here – from making planes to digging oil, to making soldiers uniforms and even cap badges – ALL of these things are currently imported meaning money and therefore jobs flow abroad. Read Keynes and UNDERSTAND him, do not do what Thatcher did and listen to a half baked lie from a lack of understanding.
The reason Labour last time screwed it up is that they read it as spending money would fix everything – so they spent trillions on German cars, on American aircraft, on French army lorries, Chinese cap badges – ALL of that money left the country and NONE of it resulted in a single job. What Keynes says is to spend money IN YOUR ECONOMY to create demand in your economy to generate jobs and tax revenue… the important part being YOUR economy.
I’d agree on re-shoring as many industries that make sense in general, but using the oil industry as the primary vehicle to make that point was just abit odd, made me feel that while well intentioned you may not understand that particular subject well enough
I did however say that we do plan to keep oil (extraction) within the mix but for other reasons we need oil for which isn’t energy generation — so that should alleviate that concern I think (assuming the strategy is meaningfully carried out)
But yes, I’d argue there are enough industries that can be reshored that could have meaningful impact especially up north, which is good for all of us
The thing is private and public businesses rarely do the things we all want unless it’s profitable to Them (it’s the nature of business), so unless there is Gov investment in infrastructure etc businesses for example arent willing to foot the bill for that kind of national investment that we all benefit from (including them btw) — unless it comes with the orders of some sort where they can recoup their investment
I agree with you in principle I just wonder about how we’d practically achieve effective reshoring of industries (that continue to thrive — domestically). While I’m certain there’ll be some industries that can’t survive reshoring, it certainly seems plausible given the shifting economic landscape globally and politically
Oil and gas are clearly industries we can bring back quite quickly with minimal government cost, they just have to sign the bits of paper. As I understand many of our refineries (though most are shut down and need reopening as well) don’t deal that well with north sea oil what we buy in can be more than paid for by selling ours. Gas of course is fine in our boilers, cookers etc. and using ours just avoids buying in. Similarly we have frackable gas which would also avoid imports and the scare stories of might cause this and light cause that have not been shown where the technique is already in use
This is the worst of times for any major defence program. Anything and everything that is currently manned will be looked at by the treasury and asked ‘can we do that with a drone?’. And then the manned program will be starved of cash until it is decided (spending lots of cash along the way) whether it can or can’t be done with a drone. And if it turns out it can’t be done with a drone the capability will be gradually downgraded until it fits into the envelope of what can be done with a drone or bare minimum crew. Low hanging fruit and all that. And we get to a position where cost and not requirement drives capability.
‘And we get to a position where cost and not requirement drives capability ‘.
That has been the position.for decades now, and particularly over the last 14 years. The plain fact is that we simply do not have anywhere near the money to provide both a capable conventional force of sufficient size and also spend half the procurement budget on the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, these two elements are completely at odds.
To do both, we’d need to be spending upwards of 5% of GDP on defence, which just isn’t on the cards.
Or we could, of course , cut the Benefits budgets but , the King of the North,the man of the people , our PR PM, has already ruled that out.
He knows you never bite the hand that feeds you.
Trump barely finished encouragement for N Ireland separation and Wales, Scotland, N I agreed for self determination. Really do we buy F 35 from someone who fans the break up of UK? And apparently has no problem with Falklands being part of Argentina unless Britain sends military to Iran. They sure have lots of strings to be an ally. The finicky, fragile, and fussy F35 is not worth the 100 million, each. A Ferrari is tremendous but useless in battle.
The post war history of British aircraft carriers has not been impressive. Constant rebuilding of platforms laid down in WW2 cost too much and led to poor availability. The first post war new builds, the Invincibles, designed initially for ASW, but extended to operate the Harrier, proved adequate, just, for Corporate ( in combination with Hermes, also laid down in WW2). But though the defence budget continued at@ 5% of GDP for years after the 1966 decision to end conventional fixed wing aviation, even that was inadequate to fund full sized carriers.
The decision to build the QEs was a major change. For the first time, Britain would have carriers that could match US carrier sortie rates. Understandably, the concept of joint force Harrier was carried over, making us dependent on the STOVL variant of the F35. We are now stuck with that single aircraft type. Unless a carrier capable UCAV can add to mass, the cost and poor availability of F35B means that our capability will fall far short of the initial ambition.
So the question has to be asked- does spending even more on carrier borne aviation make sense when its original purpose , supporting expeditionary operations, has all but disappeared.
think we have to make do, QE carriers + f35b is still good package. look at france they are spending a lot to have one carrier up to american sortie rates and wish them well.
From recent events in the Middle East I’d rather have my expensive strike aircraft onboard a moving ship. On land they are stood still just waiting for a drone, or worse, ballistic missile attack. The current Iran US conflict makes the carriers look like an even better buy.
Talks underway… why would the UK want more (other than upgraded versions) if they have their own 9th Gen Aircraft-fighter-bomber-drone shiny expensive thing in the latter stages of development?