In with the New, Farewell to the Old - Carrier Trials and Seaking Retirement

The wait is nearly over. Within the next few days, if all goes to plan, then HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH will slip and proceed from Norfolk Naval Base in the USA, put to sea and embark the F35 jet for the first time. A vision 20 years in the making will be realised.

This is an exciting time for the Royal Navy, as the culmination of literally decades of work is brought to fruition as QE embarks her jets for the first time to make sure that the vessel can operate them safely and effectively at sea.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

It is important to realise that while this is an important step, it is not the culmination of the journey for the vessel, and that it does not mean that the UK will immediately regain a carrier strike capability. Rather it is better to see this as the beginning of the next stage of the life of the ship. These trials will provide invaluable amounts of data and lessons that will need to be considered and acted on as appropriate to ensure that the ship is ready for the next phase of flying operations – likely next year.

What these trials are about is proving that the RN can embark, support and operate the F35 and that there are no glitches or issues that need rectification before the ship prepares to embark her first large scale airwing. This is important as sometimes these issues can be pretty major – for instance the French discovered when building the CHARLES DE GAULLE that her flight deck was too short for some of the aircraft to land on – necessitating emergency modifications to make it 4m longer.

It is inevitable that some commentators on the internet will doubtless see images of just 2 F35s landing and go ‘is that it’? The ‘carrier with no planes’ myth will seamlessly merge into the ‘carrier with only two planes’ myth that is utterly untrue but generates traction among those looking to criticise without reason or facts.

There may well be some negative ill informed comment about the fact that the jets will not be British, but rather American jets taken from the pool of trial aircraft. No doubt some will see this as an opportunity to attack the UK for not even being able to afford our own jets. Actually the fact that the UK will be using US jets for this process is a helpful and timely reminder of the depth of integration with the US armed forces, and the enormous debt of gratitude that the UK owes them for their support to making the QUEEN ELIZABETH and Carrier Enabled Power Projection concept a reality.

The UK as a tier one partner in the JSF project has been able to work closely with the US throughout the evolution of the aircraft, and played a key role in its development. This has helped build a common test and evaluation team that relies on pooled aircraft that are suitably instrumented to conduct the full range of tests needed to put an advanced fighter jet through its paces. This team is multi-national and the UK has played a critical role in supporting its work. The fact that the jets landing on the QUEEN ELIZABETH won’t have a Union Flag on the side of them doesn’t make the blindest bit of difference – for this is burden sharing and joint operating at its best.

More widely the RN has benefitted from an enormously close relationship and mutually beneficial with the US Navy over the regeneration of carrier capability. Since the withdrawal of Harrier GR9 in 2010, the US has gone out of its way to ensure that RN pilots were able to get places in F18 cockpits, helping build a large cadre of Fleet Air Arm pilots who fly the F18 from US carriers, at sea, as exchange officers (e.g. fully integrated into the ship and squadron and operating essentially as a US pilot, albeit with a nicer accent!).

This has helped retain fixed wing aviation experience in the FAA, and meant it was much easier to begin the transition onto the F35 programme, which will be a truly joint RAF/RN force. More widely though, the US also provided access for ground crew to work on USN Carriers deploying on operations to help relearn the art of working on a ‘big deck’. It is 40 years since the RN operated a large carrier, and 8 since it last took fixed wing aircraft to sea, and the skills needed to work on a huge flight deck are easily perishable.

For some years now there have been small detachments of RN personnel (usually 7-10 strong) deploying on US carriers around the globe as part of wider operations to ensure they are able to work safely on big flight decks. For example, Humphrey was able to spend time at sea on a US CVN in the Middle East, and was surprised and delighted to meet RN crew at all ranks and rates on the flight deck and elsewhere, playing a truly integrated part in the life of the ship.

This level of trust and access is not easily granted by the US Navy, who know that a carrier flight deck is arguably the most dangerous place in the world to work. They would not let a foreign nation put their personnel to sea in any way that could threaten the safety of their ships, aircraft and people. It is another small sign of the intimate trust that exists between our two nations.

More widely, the First Sea Lord tweeted this week about his visit to the US Naval War College in Rhode Island. There were images of him meeting the UK exchange staff who are fully embedded into the US system, where they play a key role in supporting US and UK operations. This is another timely reminder of the extraordinary depths of integration that exist between the two nations. At anyone time there are well over 500 UK military personnel at up to 2* level on exchanges in the US system, usually with US personnel occupying billets back here too.

The level of personnel exchanges is probably the highest between any two nations anywhere on the planet. It is a reflection that the US place real value in the capability and credibility of UK personnel, and their willingness to let them work as peers and partners in some very complex and sensitive areas. It is this sort of co-operation that helps remind us that for all the talk about the UK ‘not mattering’ to the US, no other nation enjoys anywhere near the same level of access or trust when it comes to exchanges and joint work.

This is also not a one way street. Part of the reason why the US is so supportive of the UK to recover Carrier Strike is the recognition that the UK can in turn provide a huge amount of support to the US system. For example when QUEEN ELIZABETH deploys, she will likely do so on a regular basis with a USMC F35 squadron embarked, or potentially other US assets too.

There is a major difference between ‘cross decking’ when a plane lands and departs shortly afterwards, and long term sustained operations from another nations carrier. To put a USMC squadron onto the QE and then operate it as an integrated part of the airwing is an astonishing sign of just how close the UK and US systems are – no other nation on the planet does this.

While there are odd short term embarkations of aircraft – for instance the French occasionally use a US CVN for training when their carrier is in refit, no other countries are able to embark each others aircraft on a carrier designed from the outset for truly joint operations.

Humphrey has heard consistent feedback from credible sources that the US Navy has closely watched how the UK has brought the CVF project to life, and that they are extremely impressed (and candidly rather jealous in places) of the capabilities of the platform. The QUEEN ELIZABETH class is the closest thing to a peer partner that the US Navy will ever see for its own carrier force, and reportedly the US see them as an extension of their own carrier fleet to the extent that Humphrey has occasionally heard them only half-jokingly referred to as the 12^th and 13^th US Navy carriers.

This is because the ability to embark, sustain and operate US platforms and get USMC F35 jets to sea on a vessel other than a LHD is seen as vital to US national interests. There is also an awareness that as the hard-stretched US carrier force is pushed to cover an ever more global set of problems, having a Royal Navy carrier able to deploy with US jets embarked and cover gaps – be it in the Med or Gulf represents a potentially massive force multiplier for the US too.

The US has been extraordinarily generous with their time and support to the UK as the F35 trials have loomed. As she moves forward in her life, the QUEEN ELIZABETH will perhaps in time become fondly regarded as being as much an American vessel as she is a UK one.

At the same time though as we look to the vibrant and exciting future of the F35, it is perhaps appropriate to pause for a moment and reflect that the much loved Sea King helicopter is going out of service after nearly 50 years.

This aircraft, which represents the best of a UK evolution of a US design has been the mainstay of UK military operations for decades, ranging from search and rescue in vile weather of civilians, to carrying troops in the desert or searching for submarines in the Atlantic. As an airframe it represents an enormously adaptable platform that has made a massive difference to the UK ability to project power globally.

For instance the final variant in service (the so-called ASACS platform) took a relatively ubiquitous ASW helicopter and turned it into one of the most capable ISTAR platforms ever fielded by the UK. The sheer range of employment of the ASACs force, from sea going operations to Afghanistan to more recently in the Middle East has shown what an enormously capable platform it is, and how much value it can bring. Not only from an tactical perspective, but more widely from an operational perspective, where ISTAR information provided has played a key role in supporting coalition operations.

The success of this airframe is in huge part down to two factors – firstly the superb support offered by military engineers who keep it running, often in very challenging conditions, and secondly the wider capabilities offered by the UK aerospace industry. It is easy to take for granted much of what our military can do, but without the support and technological knowledge of thousands of British companies from big multi-nationals through to tiny firms, bringing together their skills and experience, the UK would be far less militarily capable. It is worth reflecting that our success globally in no small part depends on the quality of the engineers and scientists that we have here at home.

The retiremement of the ASACs capability will leave a temporary gap in the UK ability to deploy forces for about a year. Whilst we should rightly be optimistic about the future, we should also be clear eyed about some of the challenges too. The gaps in bringing the ‘Crowsnest’ capability into service are not ideal, and do come at the cost of reducing the number of Merlin airframes able to be used for other roles (e.g. although the set can move across platforms, it does take an airframe off task). Given the RN is down to just 30 Merlins (out of 44 originally purchased), this does raise concerns about the ability in the medium term to generate both ASW and ISTAR forces.

More widely the fragility of the RFA force, particularly from a manpower perspective, which is seeing tankers tied up alongside (e.g. one WAVE class has not returned to sea yet, despite completing an expensive refit, fuelling rumours she may be sold to Brazil), and the fact that no stores ships are currently able to go to sea does raise medium term concerns about the viability of the RFA to support a global carrier strike force.

The sense must be that the RN is on the verge of bringing Carrier Strike into service as a capability after decades of work. The risk though is that much has been sacrificed to get here, and much remains opaque. There is still no clarity on funding for Defence, or what the likely force will look like once the MDP eventually reports back.

While QE may soon be ready for operations, the RN will now have to invest significant time and resource in getting its RFA supply chain ready for sea again, getting its escort ships fully manned and able to get back in the game of operating in major Task Groups and in sorting out manpower challenges too.

It must do this against significant public pressure – once the F35 lands on the deck, the public will assume that the UK is a carrier capable nation again. Explaining that this is one step on a long journey, and that large scale RN carrier deployments with 24 plus F35 embarked are going to be unlikely until the mid – late 2020s, when the Type 26 will eventually enter service too is going to be a hard sell.

For a public that has been told since 1998 that the RN will have a ‘supercarrier’ explaining that the delivery plan for the F35 force means the UK won’t own them in enough numbers to put the force to sea properly for the best part of another 10 years is going to be difficult to explain or understand. Some very capable PR will be needed to sell the multi-national benefits of the vessel and to justify why the UK has two very large platforms that collectively will spend the first 10 years of their life with not that many UK jets available to embark on them.

That though is a challenge for another day – in the interim let us celebrate the imminent return of the RN to the fixed wing flying club, and give thanks to all those who have helped make this possible. It is a superb story of UK success from the military, civil service and industry combined.

This is the last article from Humphrey for the next roughly 3 weeks as he is off on his summer holidays. Normal service will resume in early October!