Ministry of Defence

No, the MQ-9 Reaper has retired from service and is replaced by the MQ-9B Protector remotely piloted aircraft.

The RAF continuously reviews UK requirements across all mission sets; this includes the SEAD/EW mission and includes new additive effects including from Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACP) such as STORMSHROUD.

Further details on UK Combat Air, ACP and the potential future integration of Combat Collaborative Aircraft investments will be subject to the forthcoming Defence Investment Plan.

The Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), has considered a wide range of existing and future weapon capabilities to meet the evolving threat.

The Department did not record data to accurately determine stock availability until April 2023. As this information cannot be gathered retrospectively, data prior to this date is unavailable.

The table below shows a year-on-year comparison of Service Family Accommodation (SFA) availability from April 2023 to April 2025, including current availability as at November 2025.

The allocation of SFA for the Afghan Resettlement Programme has been carefully planned to minimise the impact on Service families.

This involves utilising surplus SFA, properties earmarked for disposal, and void properties requiring refurbishment. Refurbishing otherwise unfunded void properties not only supports SFA demand but also delivers a lasting benefit to the Ministry of Defence.

Project BEEHIVE is a joint endeavour between the Royal Navy (RN) and UK Defence Innovation to deliver 20 uncrewed surface vessels to the Surface Flotilla and Commando Force.

This initiative will not only deliver a vital Maritime Remote and Autonomous Systems (MRAAS) capability for Coastal Forces and Commando Force, but also serve as an accelerator and proving ground for the RN’s future Hybrid Navy. By enabling rapid adoption and operational testing of cutting-edge technologies, Project Beehive will drive innovation, de-risk future acquisition, and ensure the RN remains ready to meet evolving threats.

As at 12 November 2025, 99% of Service Family Accommodation (SFA) properties serving the Surrey Heath constituency meet or exceed the Decent Homes Standard (DHS). Maintenance standards for SFA follow provisions outlined in JSP 464, the DHS and the Housing Health and Rating Safety System, with contractual performance measures ensuring statutory safety checks and maintenance are completed effectively.

The Ministry of Defence ensures effective and reliable housing maintenance services for Armed Forces personnel through close monitoring of Industry Partners using Key Performance Indicators, regular reviews, audits and customer feedback.

As at 12 November 2025, 99% of Service Family Accommodation (SFA) properties serving the Surrey Heath constituency meet or exceed the Decent Homes Standard (DHS). Maintenance standards for SFA follow provisions outlined in JSP 464, the DHS and the Housing Health and Rating Safety System, with contractual performance measures ensuring statutory safety checks and maintenance are completed effectively.

The Ministry of Defence ensures effective and reliable housing maintenance services for Armed Forces personnel through close monitoring of Industry Partners using Key Performance Indicators, regular reviews, audits and customer feedback.

From an initial 196 bidders, six suppliers have been down-selected for physical trials. The name of these companies cannot yet be disclosed publicly.

The final report for the current phase is due in May 2026.

The £1 billion investment in Integrated Air and Missile Defence follows the Strategic Defence Review's recommendation and respond to the threat the UK faces in the Air domain. There is no project name for this investment. Work to deliver the Strategic Defence Review recommendations, including on homeland Integrated Air and Missile Defence, will be prioritised appropriately against the threat as part of the future Integrated Force and set out in the Defence Investment Plan to be published this year.

The Department expects to have received all seven F-35B aircraft ordered in Production Lot 17 by the end of April 2026.

We are committed to ensuring the Defence industry is a powerhouse for economic growth through strengthened industrial relationships and domestic investment. As published in the UK Defence Footprint the North East region has seen £178 million of Defence spending in 2024-25. We have committed £6 billion this Parliament towards munitions, as outlined in the Strategic Defence Review 2025, which supports defence capacity whilst generating local jobs and economic prosperity. This investment includes £1.5 billion for building six new energetics and munitions factories in the UK to deliver an 'always on' pipeline, locations and arrangements of which are being assessed through ongoing work. We plan for construction of the first six new munitions factories to begin in 2026.

Glenart Castle Mess was constructed in July 2017. The total construction time for the entire project, including planning/prebuild and post-building works was from 2014 to 29 September 2017. The capital cost of the construction of Glenart Castle Mess in Longbridge, was £29.5 million. This figure reflects the cost of building the Mess itself. However, the total capital cost of the wider project, which included associated infrastructure such as utilities, highways, hardstanding, weather protection shelters, and risk assessments, was c£36.2 million.

We are committed to ensuring the Defence industry is an engine for growth through strengthened industrial relationships and domestic investment. As published in the UK Defence Footprint the North East region has seen £178 million of Defence spending in 2024-25. We have committed £6 billion this Parliament towards munitions, as outlined in the Strategic Defence Review 2025, which supports defence capacity whilst generating local jobs and economic prosperity. This investment includes £1.5 billion for building six new energetics and munitions factories in the UK to deliver an 'always on' pipeline, locations and arrangements of which are being assessed through ongoing work. Whilst it is currently premature to comment on specific site proposals and their assessment, more detail will be available once the necessary preparatory work has been completed.

We are committed to ensuring the Defence industry is an engine for growth through strengthened industrial relationships and domestic investment. As published in the UK Defence Footprint the North East region has seen £178 million of Defence spending in 2024-25. We have committed £6 billion this Parliament towards munitions, as outlined in the Strategic Defence Review 2025, which supports defence capacity whilst generating local jobs and economic prosperity. This investment includes £1.5 billion for building six new energetics and munitions factories in the UK to deliver an 'always on' pipeline, locations and arrangements of which are being assessed through ongoing work. Whilst it is currently premature to comment on specific site proposals and their assessment, more detail will be available once the necessary preparatory work has been completed.

As is longstanding convention, I cannot comment on intelligence matters for reasons of national security and to preserve our ability to respond to future hostage incidents around the world.

As is a longstanding convention, I cannot comment on intelligence matters for reasons of national security and to preserve our ability to respond to future hostage incidents around the world.

I can confirm that the Shadow Mk2 upgrade programme has been cancelled as it is late and has failed to deliver the capability that our Armed Forces need. It is also facing unacceptable cost escalation and delays.

This decision will allow us to focus on investing in other defence priorities and the Shadow Mk1.

We won't shy away from making difficult decisions that arise in the best interests of our Armed Forces and the taxpayer.

There has been no impact on our defence projects or research collaboration where we have continued to engage with those essential US staff who continued to work during the shutdown.

The forthcoming Defence Investment Plan will, for the very first time, outline our investment priorities, taking into account our priority national security sub-sectors and the associated UK industrial capability. It will cover the full scope of the defence programme, from people and operations to equipment and infrastructure, to ensure we can deliver the vision set out in the Strategic Defence Review.

The Defence Finance and Investment Strategy will look at the entire spectrum of defence companies, from start-ups through to primes, and provide recommendations to the Defence Secretary on how barriers to investment in defence can be removed while making the sector more attractive for private investment, including venture capital, private equity and pension funds.

We have stood up a Defence Investors Advisory Group to help develop the Defence Finance and Investment Strategy, bringing together some of the best minds from banking, pension funds, venture capital and Strategic Finance. The Advisory Group held their first meeting on 27 October.

As part of the Strategic Defence Review, the Department has committed to increasing the British Army to at least 76,000 full time soldiers in the next Parliament.

Under this Government, we have driven improvements to recruiting process, stripping out outdated medical policies, reducing the time it takes to receive candidate medical records and widening cross-Government data sharing.

These measures, along with targeted recruiting and a restructure of the Army's recruiting organisation, are delivering results. Year on year the Army's soldier intake numbers are up 13%, officer numbers are up 10%.

Regarding specific measures to increase Army reserve numbers, I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 13 June 2025 to Question 57778 to the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben-Obese Jecty) which remains extant.

The Defence Investors Advisory Group is co-chaired by Kerry Baldwin and Sharon White (Baroness White of Tufnell Park) and brings together venture growth, private equity, lending and financial expertise to inform the development and delivery of the Defence Finance and Investment Strategy (DFIS), to be developed by early 2026.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) does not hold a list of all the titles of events organised by Defence Networks and there is no centrally held record of MOD’s internal network events.

The Defence Secretary engages with Cabinet colleagues on a range of foreign policy issues. The US is the UK’s principal defence and security partner and the depth of our defence relationship with the US remains an essential pillar of our security.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 23 April 2025 to Question 44918.

There are no plans to sell or donate any MQ-9 Reaper Remotely Piloted Air Systems to Ukraine.

Disposal will be managed in accordance with our Foreign Military Sales (FMS) contractual obligations.

Project DRONE ACADEMY was a time limited innovation project that ran for 12 months from May 2024 to April 2025. The 120 operators were trained from a variety of units across Army, Navy and Air Force. At the end of the trial, all lessons and equipment from the project were transferred to the Army’s Combat Manoeuvre Centre (CMC) to inform their ongoing FPV drone flying training offering.

Defence fully participated in Exercise PEGASUS, a tier one national exercise designed to simulate a realistic pandemic scenario. A Defence team was fully integrated with DHSC and UKHSA to plan and design Defence's contribution to the exercise.

For each of the three full-play 'anchor' exercise days that ran between September and October 2025, a Departmental Operations Centre was stood up. This included a mix of civilian and military experts to simulate a fully informed response to a pandemic. Defence Ministers also participated in simulated Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) meetings.

Defence teams are now involved in the evaluation process, identifying any lessons learned from the exercise. Defence will take action on these lessons and will incorporate them into our existing pandemic management plan.

Defence fully participated in Exercise PEGASUS, a tier one national exercise designed to simulate a realistic pandemic scenario. A Defence team was fully integrated with DHSC and UKHSA to plan and design Defence's contribution to the exercise.

For each of the three full-play 'anchor' exercise days that ran between September and October 2025, a Departmental Operations Centre was stood up. This included a mix of civilian and military experts to simulate a fully informed response to a pandemic. Defence Ministers also participated in simulated Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) meetings.

Defence teams are now involved in the evaluation process, identifying any lessons learned from the exercise. Defence will take action on these lessons and will incorporate them into our existing pandemic management plan.

The UK is ramping up military support to Ukraine to bolster Ukraine’s defences through the depths of winter. The UK have entered a tech sharing agreement with Ukraine which will facilitate the mass production of thousands of advanced air defence interceptor drones per month under Project OCTOPUS.

We have also announced that 140 additional lightweight-multirole missiles (LMM) manufactured by Thales Northern Ireland will be delivered and that over 85,000 drones had been delivered to Ukraine in the past six months. In the eight months since taking joint leadership of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, we have successfully raised pledges of over £50 billion in military help for Ukraine.

The Ministry of Defence has strict rules governing where smart devices, including GPS-enabled smart watches, can and cannot be used. We do not comment on the detail of those measures.

The Defence Counterintelligence Unit (DCIU) was endorsed at the Military Strategic Headquarters Board earlier in November 2025, in line with the timeline outlined in the Strategic Defence Review. This unit will build on the work of existing capabilities in Defence with further work required to reach full operating capability. We expect to announce further progress on the intelligence recommendations from the Strategic Defence Review, including the DCIU, by the end of the year.

The RAF Regiment's No2 Counter Uncrewed Air Systems (CUAS) Wing has been deployed to Belgium.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) monitors Service personnel attitudes through the Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey (AFCAS). AFCAS includes questions on satisfaction with certain aspects of accommodation and how provision of accommodation influences decisions to remain in or leave the Services. 40% of Regular personnel report that accommodation provision increases their intentions to stay, whilst 30% state that it increases their intentions to leave. While housing is widely recognised as part of the overall employment offer, there is currently no formal assessment in MOD establishing a link between accommodation quality and recruitment levels.

On 1 June 2025, the Defence Secretary, announced £1.5bn of additional funding over the next five years, to deliver longer term and enduring improvements to UK SFA housing. This investment is part of the Government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which sets a path for the next decade to transform Defence housing helping to support recruitment, retention and morale.

To help improve the attractiveness of Service life, in April 2025 we announced the new Consumer Charter, part of the Defence Housing Strategy, designed to deliver tangible improvement for Defence housing and improve the lived experience for our Service Personnel and families across the UK. Progress against the seven Charter Commitments is well underway, with many already completed, and all due to complete by the end of December 2025 - the one-year anniversary of the Annington Deal. As commitments are met, we are communicating progress to Service families.

Our Consumer Charter is raising the minimum standard of 1,000 homes to improve the lived experience for Service families this calendar year.

The UK is committed to a broad and constructive relationship with the EU. We are working to implement the package agreed at the UK-EU Summit and build on our landmark Security and Defence Partnership – which includes taking forward discussions on a bilateral participation agreement for enhanced cooperation under the EU’s Security Action For Europe (SAFE) instrument. As part of these efforts, the Defence Secretary continues to work constructively with all of our European allies, including with the European Commissioner for Defence and Space, to enhance Europe's defence industrial capacity and production and to deliver the critical capabilities to support Ukraine.

We will not pre-empt the outcome of discussions with our European partners, this Government has been clear that we would only agree to a deal if we were satisfied it provided value to the UK and UK industry.

The Ministry of Defence is working at pace to develop the five Defence Growth Deals in Plymouth, South Yorkshire, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Should economic and fiscal conditions allow, the Government will consider launching more Defence Growth Deals across the UK in the next Parliament.

At Spending Review 2025, the Government conducted the first zero-based review (ZBR) of department budgets in 18 years, with every line of spending scrutinised to ensure value for money.

Our deepest sympathies remain with the bereaved families of this tragic accident. I refer the hon. Member to The Mull of Kintyre Review published in 2011, specifically pages 17-18, which covers this aspect of the detailed inquiries into the tragic loss of Chinook ZD 576.

Partner Nations within the F-35 programme who contribute to F-35 development can recoup elements of those development costs from foreign military sales of the F-35.

To date this has resulted in $94.83 million in recoupment costs for the Department.

The information is not held in the format requested.

However, 159 sexual misconduct allegations were recorded on the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system against personnel serving at Army Foundation College (Harrogate) (AFC(H)) between 1 January 2018 and 30 November 2024. 108 of these allegations predated the Unacceptable Sexual Behaviour (USB) policy which came into effect on 19 November 2022. It is important to note that these figures include all Army personnel located at AFC(H), regardless of whether they are staff or Junior Soldiers.

AFC(H) reports every instance of unacceptable sexual behaviour under its Zero Tolerance Policy and actively encourages recruits to report concerns from day one. Serious incidents are reported to the civilian police. On arrival at AFC(H) the recruits receive day-one training in Army Values and Standards emphasizing Zero Tolerance and mandatory discharge for certain transgressions. Ofsted inspections in 2021 and 2024 praised how recruits confidently report unacceptable behaviours by peers and staff, knowing complaints will be handled seriously and swiftly. Ofsted noted that emotional and psychological safety, inclusion, and teamwork are firmly embedded in College life.

In March 2024, after interviewing 61.5% of female Junior Soldiers, Ofsted found that "female recruits rarely experience instances of sexual harassment or bullying. If they do, they know how to report it and know that staff will deal with it swiftly."

As the hon. Member will be aware, the Secretary of State for Defence has been determined to reset the relationship between Parliament and the Ministry of Defence, increasing transparency and openness. The Department sought to reflect this determination for the publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), and to build on the approach made for previous defence reviews.

On the day of the launch, we offered embargoed copies of the SDR to key stakeholders, including the House of Commons Defence Committee, certain industry representatives and others. This was done in good faith, reflecting the contribution by stakeholders to the first-of-its-kind review.

The list of industry representatives that read the SDR in this manner is below:

UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) launched in July 2025. Focus has now shifted to implementing, transitioning, and operationalising UKDI to ensure it is fully operational by July 2026. This work will include building on UKDI’s strong existing relationship with the US DIU and ensuring a partnership between the two organisations to share lessons and deliver capabilities that are of mutual defence benefit.

When deciding whether to prosecute, in the civilian Criminal Justice System or the Service Justice System, an offence committed in the UK by Service persons, prosecutors take into account the victim’s preference. These decisions are made by independent prosecutors on a case-by-case basis under protocols provided for under sections 320A to C of the Armed Forces Act 2006.

The report published by His Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate on 28 November 2024 “found good compliance with the protocols in place to govern where cases should be heard. All the cases we examined were in the correct jurisdiction and there was proper consideration of victims’ views when deciding on jurisdiction.”

A victim of a rape offence dealt with in the Service Justice System (SJS) will see their case come to trial quicker than in the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in England and Wales and are less likely to withdraw from proceedings.

Although the processes used across the two systems are not the same, investigations into adult rape-flagged offences in 2024 by civilian police take longer (326 days vs.147 days in the SJS for rape offences), with 59% of victims withdrawing during that time (vs. 24% in the SJS).

Documents reflecting the number of Service Family Accommodation by region, local authority, and Westminster constituency are attached.

Data has been sourced from Northgate and is accurate as at 1 November 2025.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) engages with Xi Engineering through the Eskdalemuir Working Group (EWG), chaired by the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, which includes the MOD, Scottish Government, local planning authorities and the wind industry.