The Royal Navy may ask US squadrons to fly off its new aircraft carrier following delays to its new F35B fighters, BBC Newsnight has learned.
MoD insiders said the US Marine Corps would be offered the use of HMS Queen Elizabeth for flight operations.
The UK plans to have its first F35 squadron operational by 2018, but Newsnight has learned that there may be further delays.
The MoD said it was not aware of any further delay to the timetable.
The plan is for one squadron of British F35s to be ready for service at sea by 2021. But even if it is achieved, it will create a gap of years where the Queen Elizabeth is ready but British squadrons are not.
For the past year defence analysts had been expecting the MoD to order 14 of the new jets.
UK pilots
In February, Newsnight was told that it would be placed "within days". But persistent doubts about the F35's enormously complex software, and an engine fire this summer caused successive delays to the decision.
When the British purchase was announced, last month, it was for just four of the planes. The MoD says that this order will allow trials to start from the Queen Elizabeth on time with "UK F35Bs, flown by UK pilots".
But the slowdown in the expected purchasing rate is bound to delay the aircraft's entry into squadron service, say defence insiders.
Former chief of the defence staff General Lord Richards told Newsnight that asking US jets to fly from the Queen Elizabeth would be a sensible way of bridging the gap between the carrier being completed, and a British squadron of jets being available.
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