Donald Trump casts future of Britain’s two new aircraft carriers into serious doubt by beginning moves to scrap their F-35 stealth jets
The President-elect may announce he wants to scrap the warplanes in favour of a cheaper alternative
DONALD Trump has cast the future of Britain’s two new aircraft carriers into serious doubt by beginning moves to scrap their F-35 stealth jets.
In another late night tweet, the US President-Elect sparked horror at the MoD by revealing he wants to dump the expensive new jump jets’ entire development programme.
The billionaire property tycoon tweeted: “Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!”
The Royal Navy is spending £6.2bn to build two new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers.
But their short decks can only launch and land jets with ‘STOVL’ vertical take off and landing capability, meaning defence chiefs would have to scrap the ships entirely if the F-35 was cancelled – as it’s the only jump jet in production.
An initial design plan to install catapults and traps on the new carriers - HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales – to launch conventional fighter jets such as F-18s was scrapped by David Cameron in 2012 after design costs overran.
On top of losing the two half-built carriers, the UK government would also have to write off a massive £2billion which it has already ploughed into the US programme.
Defence experts last night highlighted the depth of the impending disaster.
Luke Coffey, a former special adviser to defence secretary Liam Fox, said: “If the US cancels the STOVL variant of F-35, it would be an absolute betrayal of the US-UK Special Relationship”.
Bedevilled by years of delay, the F-35 programme is now the most expensive military weapons system in history, with a cost already running at £1.2trillion.
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Britain has already bought four F35Bs – the STOVL variant - for testing, with a further 14 on order.
The RAF and Royal Navy plan to purchase a total of 138 of the multi-role fighters over time.
The first of the new 70,000 tonne carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is due to be commissioned next year.
But it could take another five years to design and build replacements for them, even if fresh money can be found.
British defence officials defied Mr Trump last night to insist the F-35 jets are the right choice.
An MOD spokeswoman said: “We remain committed to the F-35 programme and believe it offers the best capability for our Armed Forces”.
It is the second time in two days that Trump has sparked alarm by unveiling a major new policy U-turn on Twitter.
Earlier, he opened up the prospect of a doomsday new nuclear weapons arms race with Vladimir Putin’s Russia by vowing to “greatly strengthen and expand” the US’s atomic arsenal.