John Cooper

My right hon. Friend is correct, but I believe that a bit of a fightback is coming. There is a discussion going on, partly because fans of the space-based solution have to answer for the reality that it is some years away. That gap is difficult, and that is where Hawkeye comes in. Quite how this naval veteran—the prototype Hawkeye first flew in 1960, and Biggles would recognise its propellers, if not its frisbee-style radar disc—is more survivable behind the onion layers of modern air defences than Wedgetail is perhaps not for us in this debate. How did we get here? Perhaps the Minister can give us some clue about any engineering or integration problems experienced by Boeing at its Birmingham facility—that is Birmingham, west midlands, not Birmingham, Alabama. He will certainly refer to the decision, as we have already heard, by the previous Government in 2021 to cut the RAF Wedgetail fleet from five airframes to three. The then Defence Committee, as we have also heard, called that an “absolute folly”, which traded a 40% cut in capability for a 12% cut in acquisition costs. But that was then, and this is now. Smoke billows over the battlefields of Ukraine. The restive Russian bear may next turn its eyes west. The Chinese dragon flexes in the South China sea. North Korea has nuclear weapons; Iran wants nuclear weapons.