Recommendation 16

The Department said that if it is to deploy one carrier at a time it would not need all 138 aircraft. It acknowledged, however, that it will need more than 48 Lightning II jets to sustain Carrier Strike operations through to the 2050s and beyond.41 It told us that the decision about how many more jets it would need had not yet been made.42 The Department is currently debating its future requirement for Lightning II numbers as part of its wider Air Combat Strategy. This debate revolves around its plans across all future air-to-air and air-to-surface combat operations and the replacement of Typhoon from the 2030s. It told us that un-crewed autonomous aircraft working alongside crewed aircraft will be part of its solution, and that a key part of the future combat air programme was understanding the right mix of planes, bearing in mind evolving technologies.43 Nevertheless, the Department was certain that the future combat air system, no matter how it is designed, would be a very expensive part of defence spending.44