The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the UK does not yet have a domestic facility to measure the stealth characteristics of its F-35B fleet, with a revised business case for a sovereign verification site now delayed until 2027, the UK Defence Journal understands.
Ben Obese-Jecty MP tabled a series of written questions asking how many UK aircraft had undergone stealth-signature measurement, how such checks are currently carried out, and what progress had been made on the long-planned Air Signature Assessment Facility.
Defence Minister Luke Pollard gave the same response to all three questions, stating that “a revised Business Case for a Sovereign Low Observable Verification Facility will be submitted in 2027” and adding that the ministry will not comment on the stealth characteristics of individual aircraft “for very obvious operational reasons.”
The answers follow earlier scrutiny from the National Audit Office, which reported that the Air Signature Assessment Facility remains the sole major piece of F-35 infrastructure the UK has not delivered. The NAO said the project had been delayed for affordability reasons and “will now not be delivered until the 2030s, albeit with partial mitigations planned.”
Those mitigations were clarified in evidence previously provided to the Public Accounts Committee by former Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Defence David Williams. He wrote that the department postponed construction in 2021 to avoid £82 million of spending in that spending review period.
The expected cost of the facility had been £151 million, with delivery now tentatively planned for 2032. Williams added that the MoD is exploring whether a lower-cost verification method is feasible and that “as a partial mitigation, the UK will send some aircraft to undergo verification testing in Italy.”
Oh do you not love the urgency shown by MOD and HMG? Is there anything at all that is not being put back, put off, delayed or just dithered over like an old woman? Pathetic. Thank God the Ukrainians are keeping the Ruskis busy for a good while.
It’s probably not worth building one until tempest is better defined. They’ll probably be focused on different frequencies.
That’s a good point, but you can bet the F-35 business case and and introduction will occur just as they decide damn we better reassess what we need for Tempest meaning either delay or obsolescence no doubt. Or both.
Also not really worth until we have sovereign external stores to profile.
There is some necessity to cross check radar profiles after repairs etc
It really depends on what the facility is for?
It’s needed to monitor the stealth profile of individual jets. As they age, they warp, bend and scuff like another other object on earth. This degrades their stealth profile.
The facility is used to grade individual aircraft and identify areas that need fixed. It’s maintenance.
OK I see so it is for testing things like ablation of RAM as well as panel alignment and QA.
Can you see it ? Yes.
Can you hear it ? yes.
Can you touch it ? yes.
Can it be tracked by Radar? Yes.
Is it Stealthy ? yes.
There, I just saved the MOD millions.🙄
Yept the UK is not just a laughing stock on Domestic matters but also when it comes to Defence 😟 🇬🇧
A business case? Are they for fucking real? I suppose it’s another army of pen pushers draining the budget so all is working as intended.
Isn’t this rather important, to inform how the jet can be used on a tactical level against different threats?
After the business case they will have to have a study, then a review, then a plan, then a revision of the plan, then a review of the revision of the plan, then the requirements analysis, an update of the requirements, a review of the requirements, a revision of the requirements, a review of the revision of the requirements …..
I hope the new Business Plan meets diversity and inclusion policies? We need a working group to discuss this and report back by 2030 at the latest.
I’m not entirely sure why the price is so high unless it’s all going to be completed inside a building. BAE Warton has or had a similar facility on one side of the airport looking at RCS of various aircraft. You either need an open space big enough to match the wavelength used or an anechoic chamber large enough to simulate an open area. Warton already has a large chamber that can test a Eurofighter but I wonder if they want to build a new one at an RAF base just because they want to. Boscombe Down has a large EW facility built in one of the old hardened hangers. it’s an area I have a lot of knowledge including building test facilities and this sounds very expensive.
This is for recoating stealth material on F35
that makes sense except for the verification part, If they were recoating the plane they still need to test the performance…. as with these areas we won’t find out until they actually do something!
Hi Malcolm.
Good post, covering some points I was about to make, and the reply by Hugo answered a question as well.
BAES Warton does indeed have the Special Projects site ( south east area of airfield against the river for those with Google Earth ) where various secret programs are conducted away from the wider Warton factory which does indeed seem to have various stealth signature testing facilities, assuming similar to those like seen at Hellendale and other sites in Califirornia where stealth shapes are tested.
So I thought we did have such a facility, until Hugo clarified what this is.
Again, my initial reaction would be it would be built at Boscombe, but Marham would be more logical.
Expected cost was £151 million. Due to delays, contract clauses, and a rise in the price of corned beef, the new cost is estimated at £13.7 billion and will be delivered by 2138
It seems that there are a lot of projects being delayed at the moment, all very depressing.
We know that there is a £2b overspend on this year’s budget or at least that is what has been reported. So the sense I have is that the MoD is trying to reprofile it’s long term budget. One of the problems that I witnessed is that the MoD persistently under-estimates the true cost of a project in order to get them accepted in the first place. The business cases always used to ask how any identify risk of overspend would be paid for and the answer was a standard, ‘from future cost efficiencies’ or some similar weaselly words. What they should have put in place was cost mitigations into the project plan – but that was too difficult. It was a blatant and obvious exercise of kicking the can down the road and strictly speaking should never have been allowed, but judging by the constant overspends and delays is just one more foolish act of failing to get a grip and kidding oneself that all will be OK in the end.
Result – individual projects overspend and run late and the full equipment program is constantly overspent. In order to get the program profile back inside the budget they shuffle the projects around playing havoc with their schedules and costs creating even more cost overruns… They’d be better off scrapping projects that are not preforming and focusing on projects that are doing OK’ish. OK that would mean capability gapping but that happens anyway and is currently uncontrolled – see T23 frigates as horrific example! A least if they accepted that some projects are just never going to deliver effectively they could control where the gaps occurred and develop sensible mitigations. Current practice and behaviour leaves the services facing considerable uncertainty regarding their equipment capabilities.
Obviously there are other reasons things are so bad at the moment not least the ludicrously poor level, and in the current geopolitical environment dangerous, level of funding for defence.
I just hope that the Defence Investment Plan comes up with some indications as to how the current chaos is going to be sorted out or we risk seeing any increase in defence spending being peed up the wall…
The delay in the Stealth Verification Facility smacks of program reprofiling. Of course, there may be planning application issues as well…
Cheers CR
Here’s a business plan… The defence of the nation so that you stupid bean counters can continue to discuss the business case of everything.
It’s just gets worse at the mod , we have these state of the art jets , the best on the planet currently and we don’t know for sure if the missiles will work as the software and integration hasn’t been done . You couldn’t make it up , just who are these idiots running out defence . Excuse me mr Putin , would you mind holding off a few years there’s a good chap , just so we can get these standoff missiles integrated in few years time when we can afford it . Farcical !