Still good enough for Nelson...

It has been a glorious day for the Royal Navy, and one that marks yet another key point in the return to operating ‘big deck’ strike carriers. HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH has embarked F35 aircraft off the coast of the USA to conduct the next stage of tests to ensure she is ready to operationally deploy in harms way.

Unlike last year, the MOD has been far more on the ball with releasing pictures and news of the event, preventing repeats of ‘embargo-gate’ that occurred last year, when despite social media being flooded with images of the first landing, total silence was maintained in providing any official news due to a press embargo that had clearly failed. This time around things are far more proactive, which is pleasing to see.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

This latest series of embarkations is important as it marks the first point when a UK owned F35 will be embarking onboard. During last years trials the UK utilised the services of two specialist instrumentation aircraft, which are US owned and based, but were flown by UK pilots.

This made perfect sense for the initial trials as it enabled platforms intended for collecting the huge range of data needed to know that the F35 can operate effectively and safely from  the Carrier to do the work.
With this done (and over 500 take offs and landings complete) the stage is now set for the next part of the evolutionary process.

Where the previous deployment was about making sure the ship could safely operate the F35 as intended, the WESTLANT 19 deployment is about showing how the Carrier Strike Group comes together as a coherent body to bring multiple capabilities to bear across different ship types, aircraft platforms and other assets like the Royal Marines embarked forces, to plan and operate as a single force.

This is a significantly more complicated piece of work, as it requires the ability to bring many different moving parts together and exercise them properly. The intent appears to be to test the ability of the QE to fully generate a strike package, plan the mission and deliver the desired effects to show the carrier can do this, all the while supported by a potent AAW and ASW force.

Of equal importance is the fact that this will be the first chance to embark the US Marine Corps and their own F35 force too, helping confirm the ongoing suitability of the QE platform for coalition operations. The USMC have very strong vested interests in the success of these trials as they will represent affirmation of the platform as a suitable means to host their own forces.

Additionally the UK force has been working alongside US peers, including escorts and also SSNs to help form a truly fused bilateral battlegroup. This is a good model of future deployments which are likely to see USN vessels operating as valued members of the Royal Navy led carrier strike group.

Its worth reflecting on this for a moment about what a superb story of international co-operation this is. The UK is the only country in the world that is seen as a sufficiently credible and relevant military partner to be able to plan and operate a seamlessly integrated carrier airwing with the US armed forces. Not just cross decking, but truly joint operations to deliver effect ashore as required.

The levels of trust required to do this are phenomenal – it essentially requires the US to be comfortable not only embarking their force, but offering its capabilities up to the UK commander onboard to employ as he or she sees fit. Given that in wartime this will require the US conduct missions and to operate with their ‘box of tricks’ including all manner of exceptionally sensitive  capabilities, tricks and sneaky badassery that will make the bad guys day a lot worse, this requires real trust  to know that the UK can be seen as a responsible guardian of this information.

More widely this deployment sends the message that the presence of a UK carrier strike group could just as easily be read as the presence of a US carrier strike group. The ability to surge and embark a force of US aircraft means that the UK carrier force will be an invaluable force multiplier to US planners over the years to come.

For the Royal Navy the next steps in WESTLANT 19 will be to work the force up and see how the CSG copes with the demands placed on it, ahead of a return to the UK having successfully proven the concept, and apply any key lessons identified.

It is hard to over emphasise how important the CSG concept is to the future of the Royal Navy, as it sits at the centre of how the force will be developed and generated for decades to come. We are on the verge of major structural changes as the RN becomes far more focused on returning to big deck operations, and are likely to see a lot less individual deployers, and a lot more focus on forces going to sea as a coherent whole.

This will pose challenges, particularly for ensuring that in the medium term there is sufficiently trained numbers of people to meet all the tasks being placed on them. Keeping the carrier force ready for operations is going to be a big ask for the surface flotilla, and may lead to huge pressures more widely in the RN unless a bid can be made to increase the headcount again.

Similarly there may be challenges ahead for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary which still seems to be struggling with its personnel dynamic, with a number of vessels laid up in Liverpool due it seems to lack of people to crew them. Most worryingly of all is the increasingly strong rumours that at least one ‘WAVE’ class tanker is on the verge of being sold, possibly to Brazil. This would be a significant loss in capability for little discernible gain. Given the increasing numbers of RFA vessels alongside due to these crew shortages, has the time come to consider whether the RN needs to play a bigger part in providing personnel for them (and if so, where from?).

But, these concerns aside, the future tonight for the Royal Navy looks incredibly bright. As of today it is one of only two nations in the world to have a pair of ‘Super Carriers’ at sea. As we speak there is a carrier strike group operating off the coast of North America, while there are multiple RN vessels operating in exceptionally challenging circumstances in the Middle East, and more broadly there are RN ships operating in the South Atlantic and Asia Pacific right now too. This comes on the back of major deployments earlier this year to the Baltic too. This is a timely reminder of the diverse and extremely capable reach the Royal Navy has, and its ability to do this is unmatched by any country save the US Navy.

The one constant though has been the utterly tedious commentary from various quarters about how its all wrong for some reason. From complaints that we used to have more ships, to complaints that the wrong type of carrier has been built to complaints about bizarre RAF conspiracies or that the ski jump makes QE look ugly (yes, thats really a concern of one person), people do seem to be good at finding reasons to moan about anything.

The fact is that right now the Royal Navy has delivered, after over 20 years of work, which could only have been achieved with the superb support from both the Royal Air Force and British Army community too, a world beating carrier strike group. This is a force at sea right now, operating the worlds most advanced fighter jets and able to deliver a level of effect that is unmatched in the history of Royal Navy aviation.

For all the ‘oh we had a navy then’ comments that appear when photos of the old Ark Royal appear, people don’t take a step back and ask themselves what was that good about a ship with a fairly limited strike capability, or that regular use of a deck park was needed, or that the likely escort group around her would have had a fraction of the capability the modern RN has got.

This isn’t to do the old ARK down, as she was a product of her time, but there is a bizzare sense in some quarters that somehow because 40 years ago the UK was operating an extremely old, very mechanically unreliable and, frankly, knackered carrier that could put about 36 jets to sea that lacked any form of precision guided weapons available to us today, that somehow we don’t have a navy today that matches up to this.

Its akin to some of the nonsense written about how because we had more ships in the past compared to today, that somehow the RN carrier force was better protected. People look at statistics on hull numbers, or impressive pictures of ships steaming sternly in close formation and assume that when they only see one destroyer and frigate, that somehow the carrier is more vulnerable.

Never mind that that destroyer can put to sea more  anti aircraft missiles with longer range than any previous destroyer, and more importantly track and engage more targets. Never mind that the single Type 23 frigate can with its 32 cell VLS provide commanders with an infinitely more credible shorter range AAW capability than the old Sea Cat (a visually aimed missile), somehow the old days were just ‘better’.

Its frustrating to encounter this constant negativity because it is so rarely based on actual facts. Try talking about how much better soft kill measures are, or how network enabled capabilities have totally changed the way that the RN fights compared to 40 or 50 years ago, and people just shrug and go ‘well we used to have a navy’. This sort of relentless comment is usually accompanied by ridiculous assertions that the current generation can’t drink, or that they don’t fight as well because, heaven forbid, there are gay people and women at sea, and it means the RN is totally doomed.

At times the sheer level of hyperbolic nonsense spouted is just astonishing, because doesn’t take into account the reality of the world we are in, how times have changed or fundamentally just how incredibly capable and effective modern RN warships, equipment and people are.

The modern RN is a force every bit as capable, aggressive and successful as its predecessors and every bit as well equipped. The force remains truly global in its outlook and retains its position and reputation as one of the leading naval powers in the world – something that will only be reinforced in the years to come with new ships, submarines and aircraft, operated by the finest people this nation can produce.

As we approach the 214th anniversary of Trafalgar, it is safe to say that while Nelson may not recognise the technology, he would recognise the fact that seapower remains central to UK defence  planning, and appprove of the people as being every bit the equal of his own force. To quote the late, great naval author John Winton, truly, the modern Royal Navy can be said to be ‘good enough for Nelson’.