Enough Planes for D-Day Commemoration, Say Ministers

An RAF Voyager and A400 take part in a rehearsal for the official coronation flypast, at RAF College Cranwell, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, England, on April 25, 2023. PA Wire/PA Images

Defence ministers have insisted that there will be enough aircraft to take part in a parachute drop to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, following reports there was only one A400 available.

Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps told the House of Commons on Monday that a report he had read over the weekend claiming there was a plane shortage is “simply not the case.”

“We will have, in fact, I think it’s 181 parachuters—exactly the same number as actually jumped in that location on D-Day,” Mr. Shapps said.

Defence minister James Cartlidge then confirmed that “we will have two A400Ms available for June 5.”

Paratroopers are expected to jump into Normandy to honour the actions of their predecessors in the Second World War.

The event takes place on June 5, a day before the D-Day anniversary itself, echoing the way airborne forces were dropped over France in advance of the landings on the beaches of Normandy, the largest amphibious invasion in military history.

The Mail on Sunday claimed that the UK only had one suitable aircraft available to take part in the Parachute Regiment’s D-Day parachute drop.

The claim was repeated by Tobias Ellwood MP, former chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, who had written in The Mail on Sunday that “as things stand, the Paras’ hopes of putting on a large-scale, multi-plane parachute drop have been limited to a single aircraft and just 100 of them jumping out—all because of the unavailability of the RAF’s heavy-lift aircraft.”

Mr. Ellwood, a regular army veteran and lieutenant colonel as a reservist in the 77th Brigade, said that the issue had been elevated to the defence secretary, who had told the BBC and GB News on Sunday that he had ordered an immediate review of the situation.

A400s Being Used in Active Warzones

Mr. Shapps told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that he had been made aware of the issue “very recently,” but pledged that by the time of the commemorations, “we'll have additional planes there.”

“It’s one of the reasons why I have argued—and successfully argued—to get £75 billion more in cash terms into our armed forces because I think we do need to be doing more of these things,” Mr. Shapps said.

The defence secretary said that A400s were being used in operations in active warzones across the world, including dropping aid in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to GB News on Sunday, Mr. Shapps told GB News’s Emily Carver the UK needs “to make sure we do it properly. Not just because it’s a display, but because it commemorates something.”

“We know there are several live wars going on and they are being used for those purposes, but I’m quite sure to commemorate something as significant as D-Day, we can do a bit better than that, and I’ve undertaken to make sure we do,” he said.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said on Sunday: “D-Day 80 will offer a comprehensive programme of tributes from today’s armed forces to their forebears with a significant amount of activity in both France and the UK, involving thousands of personnel, Royal Air Force flypasts and Royal Navy vessels.

“This will include a commemorative jump by UK paratroopers from an A400M aircraft on June 5 alongside Allied counterparts.”

U.S. reinforcements wade through the surf from a landing craft in the days following D-Day and the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France at Normandy in June 1944 during World War II. Bert Brandt/Pool via AP

Defence Spending Boost

Last month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced defence spending would increase to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030.

The prime minister confirmed the defence budget would receive an additional £75 billion over the next six years as he warned that the world was “the most dangerous it has been since the end of the Cold War.” It has been more than two years since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

In February, the House of Commons Defence Committee warned that the UK’s ability to engage in a war was marred by the armed forces’ recruitment crisis and stockpile shortage.

Military vehicles including trucks and support vehicles at the Marchwood Military Sea Mounting Centre near Southampton, England, on Feb. 13, 2024. Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images

“The government risks being unable to build true warfighting and strategic readiness because of the sheer pace of operations, which could threaten the security of the UK,” the committee told MPs in a report.

The “hollowing out” of the military since 2010 had undermined the country’s warfighting resilience, the committee’s inquiry heard, warning that the armed forces would exhaust their capabilities “after the first couple of months of the engagement” in a peer-on-peer war.

PA Media contributed to this report.