I refer the Rt Hon. Member to the answer I gave on 30 November 2021 to Question 79280 to the Rt Hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (Mr Healey).

The Defence Equipment Sales Authority has sold the retired Sentinel R1 fleet of five aircraft to a US consortium of three companies, Springfield Air, Raytheon US and Bombardier. The aircraft are not currently in an airworthy condition and the potential receipt to defence will depend upon the ability of the consortium to regenerate and fly at least one aircraft.

I am withholding the value of the sale as it may prejudice commercial interests.

Sentinel's radar and mission system are now increasingly obsolescent and will face increasing reliability issues as time progresses. Retaining the capability would have required significant upgrade expenditure and the March 2021 out of service date (OSD) has been retained. It is necessary to retire certain capabilities at planned OSDs to allow re-investment in future capability.

I refer the right hon. Member to the Answer I gave to the hon. Member for Portsmouth South on 11 June 2020 to Question 56145.

The Covid-19 outbreak has had no bearing on Sentinel.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 determined that Sentinel should have an out of service date (OSD) of March 2021.

Sentinel’s radar and mission system are now increasingly obsolescent and will face increasing reliability issues as time progresses. Retaining the capability would have required significant upgrade expenditure and the March 2021 out of service date has been retained. It is necessary to retire certain capabilities at planned OSDs to allow re-investment in future capability.

The Covid-19 outbreak has had no bearing on Sentinel.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 determined that Sentinel should have an out of service date (OSD) of March 2021.

Sentinel’s radar and mission system are now increasingly obsolescent and will face increasing reliability issues as time progresses. Retaining the capability would have required significant upgrade expenditure and the March 2021 out of service date has been retained. It is necessary to retire certain capabilities at planned OSDs to allow re-investment in future capability.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 set Sentinel’s out of service date of March 2021. Sentinel will continue to deliver operational capability and the ability to deploy on operational tasking into the first quarter of 2021.

While no identical capability is operated by the UK (though similar capabilities exist in the NATO inventory), the UK does have a number of other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that collect different types of intelligence information, including long-range strategic assets (Sentry, Rivet Joint and Poseidon) and shorter-range more tactically-focused assets (including Shadow, Reaper and Watchkeeper).

The safety and security of our Armed Forces remains paramount. This is achieved through robust Force Protection, coupled with advanced surveillance, intelligence analysis and situational awareness processes to maintain operational advantage.

The Covid-19 outbreak has had no bearing on Sentinel.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 determined that Sentinel should have an out of service date (OSD) of March 2021.

Sentinel’s radar and mission system are now increasingly obsolescent and will face increasing reliability issues as time progresses. Retaining the capability would have required significant upgrade expenditure and the March 2021 out of service date has been retained. It is necessary to retire certain capabilities at planned OSDs to allow re-investment in future capability.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 set Sentinel’s out of service date of March 2021. Sentinel will continue to deliver operational capability and the ability to deploy on operational tasking into the first quarter of 2021.

While no identical capability is operated by the UK (though similar capabilities exist in the NATO inventory), the UK does have a number of other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that collect different types of intelligence information, including long-range strategic assets (Sentry, Rivet Joint and Poseidon) and shorter-range more tactically-focused assets (including Shadow, Reaper and Watchkeeper).

The safety and security of our Armed Forces remains paramount. This is achieved through robust Force Protection, coupled with advanced surveillance, intelligence analysis and situational awareness processes to maintain operational advantage.

There will be no redundancies for RAF personnel. All personnel will be posted elsewhere within the RAF and wider Ministry of Defence. There will be a range of future opportunities including in ISTAR where assets include Poseidon which met its initial operating capability in April 2020.

We continue to liaise closely with our contractors as their contracts reach their long-standing contract termination points to support operational capability until out of service date and to deactivate Sentinel as efficiently as possible.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 set Sentinel’s out of service date of March 2021. Sentinel will continue to deliver operational capability and the ability to deploy on operational tasking into the first quarter of 2021.

While no identical capability is operated by the UK (though similar capabilities exist in the NATO inventory), the UK does have a number of other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that collect different types of intelligence information, including long-range strategic assets (Sentry, Rivet Joint and Poseidon) and shorter-range more tactically-focused assets (including Shadow, Reaper and Watchkeeper).

The safety and security of our Armed Forces remains paramount. This is achieved through robust Force Protection, coupled with advanced surveillance, intelligence analysis and situational awareness processes to maintain operational advantage.

The Out of Service Date for Sentinel was set at March 2021 in Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015, this remains the case.

The Sentinel R1 has been operationally deployed in support of a number of operations. Some operations are considered to be both conventional and counter-insurgency; for example operations in Afghanistan (Op HERRICK) and Iraq (Op SHADER). It has also been deployed on operations in Libya (Op ELLAMY), Nigeria (Op TURUS) and Mali (Op NEWCOMBE), all considered conventional operations.

Sentinel was introduced in 2008 in the knowledge that a significant equipment upgrade would be required in the mid 2010’s.

The Defence Review in 2010 cancelled this expected upgrade bringing forward the likely out of service date.

The SDSR 2015 determined that Sentinel should be retained for a further period and set a new out of service date of March 2021. While some work was conducted on the on-board equipment this fell well short of a full system upgrade.

The radar and mission system are now increasingly obsolescent and will face increasing reliability issues as time progresses.

Retaining the capability would have required significant upgrade expenditure and the March 2021 out of service date has been retained.

No identical capability is operated by the UK (though similar capabilities exist in the NATO inventory).

The UK does however have a number of other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that collect different types of intelligence information, including long-range strategic assets (Sentry, Rivet Joint and Poseidon) and shorter-range more tactically-focused assets (including Shadow, Reaper and Watchkeeper).

No recent discussions have been undertaken with the US Defense Secretary on the future of the Sentinel RI project.

The number of RAF Sentinel R1 aircraft in the Forward and Sustainment Fleets at the beginning of each month for 2017 is given in the table below:

The Forward Fleet comprises serviceable and short term unserviceable aircraft. Typically, the short term unserviceable aircraft are undergoing minor works, forward maintenance or any other unforeseen rectification or technical inspection that can arise on a day-to-day basis. The sustainment fleet includes aircraft undergoing deep maintenance, upgrade programmes or being held in storage. The number of aircraft available varies day-to-day, according to normal fleet management activities. The above figures include Sentinel ZJ693 which was placed in long term storage on 1 April 2017

I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my noble Friend, the Minister of State for Defence, the right hon. Earl Howe to the noble Lord, Lord Moonie of Bennochy to Question HL3584 in the House of Lords.

Sentinel aircraft are currently deployed in the Middle East. They support Op SHADER and other tasking, as dictated by strategic necessity.

The planned out of service date for the Sentinel aircraft is 2021. There are currently no plans to extend the out of service date. As with all capabilities, this is kept under review.

The original out of service date for the Sentinel fleet has been extended from 2018 to 2021. The UK will continue to provide NATO with high-end capability where required to by the Alliance. We remain actively engaged in understanding and responding to NATO's evolving future capability requirements, incorporating these into national plans.

The original service date for the Sentinel fleet has been extended from 2018 to 2021. This will be achieved by careful fleet management practices, including the removal of one Sentinel from front line service with effect from 1 April 2017.