Defence cuts 'to leave aircraft carriers without any planes'

Defence chiefs are braced for a cut in their budgets of about 25 per cent over the next year.

If the cuts are implemented the first of the Navy's new aircraft carriers is like to put to sea in six years time with no aircraft to go on it, and none likely for at least another eight years.

Also HMS Daring, the first of a class of super destroyers already £1.5 billion over budget, is likely to join the fleet next year, a parliamentary committee reveals today, without its main missiles being fired even in a test. It is unlikely to have an effective missile system for another three years.

The RAF has cut back its final order for the £23billion Typhoon Eurofighter programme but it is still ordering twice as many fast jets as it has trained pilots.

The Army has been asked to consider cutting at least three fighting infantry battalions - some 5,000 soldiers - just as the recession is boosting recruiting.

The Army commands about 19 per cent of the total defence spend but only 10 per cent of the budget for new equipment. Many units will have been told to soldier on with tracked troop carriers designed in the Sixties and they will probably not get a new battlefield carrier for another 15 years.

The Harrier jump jet force will be taken out of service next year. When the first of the new aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is commissioned in six years' time, it was supposed to take the Harriers until the new Lockheed F-35 Lightning II is ready in about 15 years at the earliest. But now there will be no Harriers, and there are fears that the F-35 Lightning is becoming prohibitively expensive.

The crisis has emerged because the defence budget for this year is more than 10 per cent overspent. Gordon Brown has said this has to be cut now and so has refused American requests for British reinforcements for Afghanistan.

Most parties at Westminster agree there will have to be a cut in the defence budget currently set at about £36 billion. Tory frontbencher Andrew Lansley has proposed a cut of 10 per cent in all ministries except health and overseas aid.

In its report the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee adds that the programme for the new Daring class Type 45 air defence destroyer, each the size of a small cruiser and costing £650 million or more, has been a victim of "persistent over-optimism and underestimation of the technical challenge".

Other prominent programmes face delays and cost over-runs including the new Nimrod MRA4 surveillance plane, the Astute submarine, and the multinational European transport plane the Airbus A400M, which has still not made a flight despite spending running into billions.