UK and US ‘shoulder to shoulder’ against Iran-backed militants, says Shapps

However, Prof Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for airpower and technology at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), warned that if HMS Queen Elizabeth deployed to the region it “could not generate the same embarked air wing capacity as the Eisenhower, even with US Marine Corps F-35Bs embarked”. He added: “The UK has not bought enough F-35Bs to regularly generate more than 12 deployed jets on a sustained basis. Even that many permanently deployed would be essentially the whole capacity of the current force.”