The Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers of the UK Royal Navy are expected to remain in service until 2069, but doubts are already being raised about the operability of British aircraft carriers as part of a combat deployment, The National Interest reports.
Although HMS Queen Elizabeth took part in a successful round-the-world voyage to the Far East and back, it was a carefully planned goodwill tour rather than a combat deployment.
The aircraft carrier has conducted several F-35 combat sorties in the Mediterranean during its 2021 deployment, but the Royal Navy has unlikely done well in sending HMS Queen Elizabeth to the Red Sea to support the US Navy’s Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) in defence of commercial shipping against missile attacks by the Houthis in the region.
HMS Queen Elizabeth was due to take part as the flagship in a long-planned NATO exercise, but instead the warship was heading to the Rosyth dockyard to fix a problem with the starboard propeller coupling. HMS Prince of Wales had to fill in as the flagship of the NATO drill.
Tom Sharpe of the UK’s Telegraph newspaper claimed in early February that even at full combat readiness, the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers would be poorly suited for operations in the Red Sea, especially without support from the US Navy.
“Our carriers are a great capability but even when they are fully formed, in some faraway time when we have a full complement of UK jets and other aircraft to put on them, they will never rival a US Carrier Strike Group for the breadth of capability and firepower. This doesn’t mean they aren’t capable but they aren’t as capable as that.”
Sharpe added that the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers were far from fully formed and equipped, suggesting that there were problems with ships’ airborne early warning, air-to-air refuelling, and solid stores support.
The point is, with the Eisenhower group in place, all of these shortcomings can be mitigated. Take Ike away and things look a bit thin.
Besides manpower and mechanical issues, costs must also be considered. The Royal Navy may be forced to sell the £3.5-billion aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales as early as 2028 due to funding problems, according to UK naval officials. A naval source told The Daily Mail that the “nightmare scenario of selling a carrier” to free up funds was discussed by members of the Maritime Enterprise Planning Group.
Whether the Royal Navy would be able to afford operating these aircraft carriers in the coming decades, despite the ships costing £3bn each and suffering from serious mechanical failures, floods and fires, remains a question.
