Rory Stewart

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.

And all it is, is an exquisite target for everybody's cheap mass drones to hit.

Yeah, because when I was chairing the Defense Select Committee in 2014, that was the moment at which Putin invaded Crimea.

Yeah.

And up to that point, the assumption had been that really our military was an expeditionary force connected to the US and NATO that fought wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.

So what kind of military are you talking about?

You're talking about Royal Marines or paras with armored vehicles traveling around villages in Afghanistan, and you need protection against improvised explosive devices, and you're fighting a guerrilla warfare with people with Kalashnikovs.

Fast forward, there are two completely new types of war that we're dealing with, and they are Ukraine and Iran.

Ukraine is a war with endless hovering cheap drones, now nearly 60 miles deep, freezing a front line where it's drone, counter drone strikes.

Iran is the dream of the high-tech US-Israeli planners.

most exquisite expensive equipment in the world, incredible radar, incredible targeting, incredible precision bombing, wiping out all Iranian air defenses in 24 hours.