Rory Stewart

If he had wanted to cancel one of those programs, let me try one on you.

The most obvious one, aircraft carriers, total waste of time.

Total waste of time.

These aircraft carriers can only operate if you have a whole fleet of other ships around that we can't afford to have.

We can barely afford to pay for the planes on them.

They were all based on projecting us into the Indo-Pacific, which we're not interested in anymore, and fighting .

Forget it.

Is any politician going to say, we're canceling our aircraft carriers and tell the Navy we're getting rid of all that?

Absolutely.

Second one, this fighter, let me explain about the GCAP fighter.

This is a fighter plane we're developing with the Italians and Japanese.

Question number one,

Do we actually need pilots in planes anymore, or are they going to be replaced by drones?

What is this plane there to do?

Is it hovering around in the air coordinating drones, or is it doing its own strikes?

And get this, this thing will be delivered in 2040.

Does anyone seriously think that we know what the world of AI technology and drones will be like in 2040?

Is there any point to spending billions of pounds designing a plane with a pilot in it to fight a war from 10 years ago in a world that's increasingly about drones?

Because the real risk is you build this thing.

It costs, I don't know, 200 million pounds a pop.