07 May 2020

UK parliament questions US threat to cancel F-35 deployments

by Gareth Jennings

The UK parliament has questioned a United States threat to cancel long-planned deployments of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) to the country following the government’s decision to open-up the national 5G network to Chinese development.

Near-term plans for US Air Force and US Marine Corps F-35s to deploy to RAF Lakenheath and aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth respectively could be scuppered over British government plans to allow Chinese company Huawei to build its national 5G network. (US Navy)

The Chair of the Defence Committee, Tobias Ellwood, sent a letter to the UK Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, on 6 May in which he asked for clarification on recent reports that Republican senators in the US were moving to ban new deployments of military aircraft to countries with at-risk vendors in their 5G and 6G networks.

“If passed, this would preclude the long-planned US Air Force [USAF] deployment of F-35s at Royal Air Force [RAF] Lakenheath, and could also bring into question the plans for HMS Queen Elizabeth to carry US Marine Corps [USMC] F-35s,” the letter said, adding, “I am sure you agree with me that even the airing of such disagreements between us and our closest security ally is unhelpful in a time when global stability is at the lowest it has been for a generation. I should therefore be grateful if you could clarify what the [UK] government is doing to ensure that this initiative is not pursued further.”

As noted in Ellwood’s letter that was written in response to a report first published in The Daily Telegraph

The UK parliament has questioned a United States threat to cancel long-planned deployments of the Lo...

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