U.K. Planning Four Front-Line F-35 Squadrons | Defense content from Aviation Week
LONDON—The U.K. is planning to build a future force of four front-line F-35 squadrons, now that the country has committed to a fleet of 138 aircraft.
The U.K. will build a front-line fleet of 48 aircraft, 12 per squadron. A fifth unit, also with 12 aircraft, will be formed as an operational conversion unit (OCU), Air Cmdr. Harvey Smyth, the commander of the U.K.’s Lightning Force, told reporters on the sidelines of an F-35 training conference here May 19. An additional three aircraft will serve with 17 Sqn, an operational test and evaluation unit which will be based at Edwards AFB, California. This means the U.K. will have an operational fleet of around 63 aircraft, less than half of the total number of F-35s that the U.K. has agreed to purchase under last year’s Strategic Defense and Security Review. But Smyth pointed out that the total number would cover attrition replacements and the so-called sustainment fleet, which is defined as additional aircraft required to sustain the fleet to its out-of-service date as well as to cover maintenance. Other U.K. combat aircraft also have large sustainment fleets.
The U.K. is in the process of establishing its first front-line unit, 617 Sqn., which will be stood up at MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina in January 2018. The squadron will move to the U.K. that summer and achieve an interim operating capability on land by that year’s end. “Once the squadron is formed up, they have six months to get things squared away before starting a transition back to the U.K. starting in June of 2018,” Smyth told delegates.
Smyth said the U.K. does not plan to disperse its F-35s to other bases. All F-35 operations will be concentrated at RAF Marham, Norfolk, currently the U.K.’s main Panavia Tornado operating base. Over the coming years Marham’s infrastructure will undergo an about £500 million renovation. It will include the construction of an integrated training center and maintenance facilities, as well as improvements to runways, taxiways and the construction of three hover pads. U.K. operations will be conducted from hardened aircraft shelters (HAS), each of which can house two aircraft. Two HAS sites at Marham with multiple shelters will eventually each house two squadrons.
The OCU unit, which has not been given a squadron number, will begin training in the U.K. in the third quarter of 2019. The second front-line squadron, 809 Naval Air Squadron, will not form until April 2023. The F-35s will form the backbone of the U.K.’s carrier strike capability, using the two new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. So the Lightning Force will also have to begin preparing to go to sea. First sea trials with F-35s operating from the ship are planned for late 2018 off the U.S. East Coast. A maritime initial operating capability at sea is expected in late 2020.
Smyth told delegates the Lightning Force would face some challenges training in U.K. airspace. The U.K.’s increasingly crowded skies means that performing large-scale exercises with multiple flights would likely have to be done overseas or in a synthetic environment. Overseas options include the Red Flag exercises in Nevada or Alaska or Maple Flag at Cold Lake in Canada. Australia is also considering conducting exercises in its extensive Woomera ranges, where the U.K. tested its Taranis unmanned combat air vehicle demonstrator.
“In the good old days … we could put 40-50-60 aircraft into Scotland and run a pretty good joined up exercise and everyone would have their own piece of airspace and we’d get lots of good training out of it,” Smyth told delegates. “I can pretty much take up that airspace with an F-35 four-ship, so when we start talking about putting multiple four-ships out of Marham or Lakenheath, the U.K. simply isn’t big enough. If the U.K. itself was a range, we would struggle,” Smyth said.
Training was also handicapped by the possibility of adversaries listening to electronic emissions. “Our Typhoon force is already strongly handcuffed” because of “collectors sitting in the North Sea. We are keen not to give away our crown jewels,” Smyth added.