Lord Lee of Trafford
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809 Naval Air Squadron
Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)
My Lords, in 2022 the then Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, told the International Relations and Defence Select Committee that the RAF training programme was “lacking” and
“not in the place I would like it to be”.
Apparently, at that stage we had only 30 British pilots who could fly the F35s. Has the situation improved? How many pilots have we got at present who can fly the F35s? Can he also please tell us what aircraft are currently deployed in the Falklands?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, on the number of pilots going through training, as I have said, the Lightning Force continues to grow its pilot numbers and graduate additional pilots in the operational conversion unit in line with the planned force growth. The pilots are in training. I will write to the noble Lord and let him know exactly how many pilots we have available at the moment. His second question was about the Falklands. My understanding is that there are four Typhoon FGR4s based in the Falklands and a Voyager tanker based at Mount Pleasant in the South Atlantic.