Navy will not get fleet of US joint strike fighters until 2023, three years after carrier due to enter service
The Ministry of Defence has still not decided how many planes should be assigned to the navy's long-delayed and increasingly expensive aircraft carrier programme, but whatever the number they will not be available for more than a decade, it has emerged.
Confusion over the carrier project was compounded on Friday when the MoD said in its "business plan" that the navy will not get its fleet of US joint strike fighters (JSFs) until 2023, three years after HMS Prince of Wales, the carrier to be equipped with the aircraft, is due to enter service.
The government decided under last year's strategic defence review to switch from a short takeoff and landing version of the JSF aircraft to one that lands and takes off by catapult and arrester wires – "cats and traps".
Defence officials denied on Friday that there was any delay in the project. They said just how many of the aircraft the navy – and the RAF – would be provided with had yet to be agreed. "We do not talk about specific numbers," an official said.
The MoD originally planned to buy more than 130 of the fighters, a figure which will be drastically reduced.
Though the JSF "carrier variant" is cheaper than the model originally chosen by the navy, their costs have soared to about £100m each. It emerged last month that the cost of the carriers had also risen and could reach £7bn, partly due to the decision to redesign the Prince of Wales. The first carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be mothballed when it is completed and Britain will be without a carrier able to take aircraft for 10 years.
Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the first sea lord, told MPs this week the navy faced a major challenge in building up a force of fighter jets to equip the new carrier.
In evidence to the Commons defence committee he said he wished he could revisit the government's last-minute decision in the defence review to scrap the Ark Royal and its Harrier jumpjets. He said that if the navy still had a carrier it would be deployed on the operations in Libya. "If we had a carrier it would be there."
Stanhope said the decision to scrap the Ark Royal before the Prince of Wales was ready in 2020 could limit Britain's ability to provide air support for British forces. He said that could leave the UK without a carrier for around three out of every eight years due to the need for periodic refits.
Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, said Stanhope's comments and those of the head of the army and airforce "blow a hole in the government's arguments over their rushed defence review". He added: "Ministers have consistently said that decisions made in the review do not hinder our services but now we have service heads saying that an aircraft carrier would be used in Libya and that our forces are stretched".
As the government continues to come under pressure over defence cuts, it was reported on Friday that plans will be unveiled on Monday to enshrine in law the military covenant – the nation's duty of care for all servicemen and women. The MoD declined to comment.
Legislation being debated by parliament allows the defence secretary to make an annual report on the covenant, but stops short of endowing legal status. Its passage has been delayed, but defence minister Andrew Robathan told the Telegraph: "We are putting the military covenant on a statutory basis for the first time."
Putting it into law would potentially permit service personnel a recourse to the courts if they believed they had been disadvantaged in terms of accessing public services following tours overseas.
The RAF meanwhile said that its armed pilotless drones used in operations in Afghanistan and controlled from a US base in Nevada will for the first time be controlled from the UK.
Some 40 RAF personnel will be based at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. At a cost of £125m, the RAF is to double its fleet of five Reaper drones now operating over Afghanistan.