{"id":50139,"date":"2026-05-27T16:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/50139\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T16:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:35:11","slug":"britain-to-announce-nuke-jet-funding-next-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/50139\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain to announce nuke jet funding next week"},"content":{"rendered":"

The British government\u2019s long-awaited Defence Investment Plan is due to be published next week, which is expected to include funding to expand Britain\u2019s nuclear capabilities \u2013 with the purchase of 12 nuclear-capable F-35A fighter jets.<\/p>\n

The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) has been significantly delayed, with reports that Starmer would not sign off the costs for the Strategic Defence Review which was published last summer. The government will be increasing spending by an extra \u00a318 billion over four years \u2013 pushing Britain\u2019s military outlay to nearly 3% of GDP by 2030.<\/p>\n

The plan is expected to include an upgrade to Britain\u2019s conventional Typhoon jets as well as the funds to purchase the nuclear-capable F-35A jets announced by Starmer at last year\u2019s NATO summit. The jets will be assigned to NATO\u2019s Dual Aircraft Capability mission and gives the RAF a nuclear role for the first time since 1998.<\/p>\n

These jets are designed to launch US nuclear bombs now stationed at NATO bases across Europe and here in Britain at RAF Lakenheath. The bombs are being pushed by military experts as \u2018usable\u2019, yet are three times as destructive as the bomb that killed 200,000 people in Hiroshima. The jets also tie Britain even more closely to the Trump administration, which will determine the deployment and targeting of any nuclear attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whilst 12 initial F-35A nuclear-capable jets are being purchased \u2013 at a cost<\/a> of at least \u00a32.5 billion \u2013 another 63 will be ordered along with the same number of F-35B conventional jets over the lifetime of the weapons. The National Audit Office estimates the whole programme will cost at least \u00a371 billion. However, this does not factor in infrastructure upgrades or training needed for the jets\u2019 integration into the NATO nuclear mission. So these costs will only go up.<\/p>\n

CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:
\u201cThis military spending hike announcement is totally out of step with what the country needs now. People\u2019s wages have been flatlining for over twenty years whilst costs continue to rise and public services crumble. And we haven\u2019t really started to feel the impact of the increases in energy and food prices caused by the illegal US-Israeli attacks on Iran \u2013 which is likely to push millions more into poverty. What we are seeing is a continuation of a disastrous policy by the government which is making the world more dangerous and making us all poorer. It is contributing to the erosion of global nuclear disarmament as the purchase of these jets breach the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Now more than ever we need a new political direction in this country\u00a0 \u2013 away from war mongering and nuclear escalation and towards policies that stop people being pushed into poverty, that rebuild vital public services and invest in climate action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British government\u2019s long-awaited Defence Investment Plan is due to be published next week, which is expected to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,4358,25119,94,23138,2016,6669,3251,3252,3869],"class_list":["post-50139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-defence-investment-plan","tag-f-35a","tag-keir-starmer","tag-military-spending","tag-nato","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-raf","tag-royal-air-force","tag-strategic-defence-review"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116647514960871708","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}