Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Service Inquiry into the loss of the F-35B Lightning ZM152 (BK-18) of 617 Squadron, embarked on HMS Queen Elizabeth on 17 November 2021, what steps they are taking to address the findings that 617 Squadron "was under strength, morale was low, there were insufficient Quality Assurance checks being conducted at Marham and general readiness for FORTIS was lower than COMUKCSG had been led to believe".

As a direct result of the lessons identified during and post Operation FORTIS, embarked engineering workforce levels were significantly increased, in recognition of the additional workload and fatigue associated with embarked operations. Since 2021, RAF Marham has been subject to two external third-party audits, with the most recent concluding that previously identified shortfalls had been resolved, or that appropriate corrective action plans were in place. The unit maintains a full internal quality audit programme with regular continuous-improvement events and independent engineering standard evaluations. Readiness for embarked operations is constantly scrutinised, and optimised where required, during regular Carrier Strike multi-disciplinary meetings.