Armed Forces: Aircraft Carrier

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, British F35B aircraft and pilots will be the first to operate from our carriers. UK pilots, engineers and deck handlers are currently operating from US Navy carriers, developing and maintaining skill sets to regenerate our carrier strike capability, working, as my noble friend said, with the US Marine Corps. We continue to identify opportunities to develop interoperability and synergy with our allies, including potential options to operate US Marine Corps aircraft from our carriers.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the whole House, and the nation, are delighted that we are now developing this carrier capability again after the real risk we took in 2010 of dropping it for the first time in 100 years. We are looking forward to this date. It is a long period of risk: we have got through five years of it and there are five years to go. There have been reports that the Sea Lightning—which rolls off the tongue much better than Lightning II, so perhaps the Minister would consider calling it Sea Lightning in future, rather than F35B—might be vulnerable to cyberattack through the autonomic logistics information system. If this is true, will the Minister confirm that we are making sure it is resilient, and that that resilience will be hardened, to stop that happening?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, that is a very good question. I gave a Written Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, on this very subject. The F35 autonomic logistics information system has been designed to be resilient against cyberattack and will be subject to testing throughout the life of the programme.