The UK has extra state-of-the-art F-35 quick jets than pilots due to issues with flying coaching, the defence secretary has revealed.
The Ministry of Defence solely has simply over 20 of the next-generation £100m warplanes however can’t even man all of them, Ben Wallace confirmed.
“It’s a shambles,” a former Royal Air Force officer stated.
Speaking to a committee of Peers, the defence secretary described the scenario as “quite a challenge”, claiming that the deficit in pilots was additionally as a result of the F-35 Lightning plane is new.
However, the Ministry of Defence formally introduced its intention to purchase the jets – a programme led by the United States and the US defence large Lockheed Martin – again in 2006, and the primary British pilot flew one in 2010.
The defence secretary conceded that the navy’s flying coaching – beset by delays, with pilots ready as much as eight years to qualify as a substitute of the goal time of between two-to-three years – was a key issue.
“Our pilot pipeline is not in a place I would want it to be,” Mr Wallace stated.
He had instructed Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, the top of the Royal Air Force, to kind out flying coaching as his solely precedence greater than three years in the past. Yet – as revealed by Sky News over the summer time – it’s nonetheless in disaster.
The F-35 is without doubt one of the UK’s costliest and coveted tools programmes, with the jets seen as bringing a brand new stage of functionality to the armed forces due to their refined radars, sensors and different items of covert tools.
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Britain initially supposed to purchase 138 of the F-35 jets over time.
However, at current it has solely purchased 27 of the plane.
One of them is out of use after crashing into the ocean off one of many Royal Navy’s plane carriers final yr, three extra are within the US, leaving simply 23 within the UK for use by Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm pilots.
Source: information.sky.com”