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The F-35 is the best fast jet the UK has ever had – but the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) cost-cutting approach has caused significant problems in its use. In a new report on the UK’s F-35 capability, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calls for a more radical plan to address an unacceptable personnel shortage, while raising questions over the costs of introducing F-35As in their nuclear weapons role.

• Read the report
• Read the report (PDF)
• Inquiry: The UK’s F-35 stealth fighter capability
• Public Accounts Committee

The PAC report lays out a pattern of short-term decision-making from MoD impacting the F-35’s capability, availability to fly and value for money, including:

• A delayed investment in the facility which assesses the F-35’s stealth capability. In the short-term £82m was saved by 2024-25, but inflation from building later will have cost MoD £16m more than that by 2031-32;
• In 2010, the MoD chose to delay the delivery of some aircraft to make short-term financial savings, reducing the number of aircraft available today – a situation exacerbated by a delay of seven aircraft by a year in 2020 for financial reasons;
• The delay of 809 Naval Air Squadron’s infrastructure, delivery of which MoD decided to put off till 2029 to save money, knowing it would cost more long-term and reduce capability. Costs here have now increased from £56m to a forecast £154m.

The programme suffers from an unacceptable shortage of engineers, which poses an obstacle to the jets flying more often.

While this shortage reflects wider challenges across the armed forces, the MoD worsened the situation for F-35s by miscalculating how many engineers would be needed per plane, through failing to take into account staff taking leave and performing other tasks.

Though this mistake has now been identified and new funding provided, it will still take several years to resolve.

There are also questions over the additional costs of operating nuclear-capable F-35As, and how long the necessary arrangements will take to prepare.

Becoming certified for the NATO nuclear mission will add new requirements to training, personnel and possibly infrastructure, but discussions in this area are at an early stage, and no indication of forecast costs has been provided by MoD.

The report also highlights the substandard accommodation at RAF Marham, the F-35’s main operating base.

The MoD accepted to the PAC’s inquiry that Marham’s living quarters are currently not good enough, with frontline personnel revealing that it is shabby, sometimes lacking hot water, and lacking bus access to a local town.

Given already existing recruitment and retention issues in the programme, MoD should urgently look to prioritise investment to bring forward completion of improvements on a much earlier timescale than the currently-planned and very complacent date of 2034.

Chair comment

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: 

“Making short-term cost decisions is famously inadvisable if you’re a homeowner with a leaky roof, let alone if one is running a complex fighter jet programme - and yet such decisions have been rife in the management of the F-35.

"During our inquiry, the MoD told us that they viewed these kinds of decisions costing the taxpayer many millions more in the long-term than the money saved in the short term, as a “conventional consequence” of budget management. This is exactly the sort of attitude that our Committee exists to challenge. 

“There are basic lessons here that MoD has been worryingly slow to learn. Its appraisal of the F-35’s whole-life cost is unrealistic, which it currently gives as at almost £57bn through to 2069.

"But this figure does not include costs for personnel, fuel and infrastructure, which the MoD will struggle to operate a successful programme without. Moreover, the MoD is due to declare the jet’s full operating capability, despite unresolved personnel shortages.

"It will also not have the ability to attack ground targets from a safe distance until the early 2030s – the aspect of the F-35’s capability which the Chief of the Defence Staff told us worried him most.

"The F-35 is the best fighter jet this nation has ever possessed. If it is to be wielded in the manner in which it deserves, the MoD must root out the short-termism, complacency and miscalculation in the programme identified in our report.”