A Picture Paints a Thousand Words...

The sea is an unforgiving environment that will ruthlessly punish even the slightest mistake without remorse or pity. Operating at sea is difficult and dangerous, and even routine passages need to be planned with respect for the weather, for the conditions and for the potential for things to go wrong.

Some navies are fair weather forces – they go to sea in good weather, or they don’t stay out at night. They may look good on a paper order of battle, and theoretically could do well when their numbers of ships/missiles are added up against a potential foes, but in reality they simply are not sea going navies.

Other navies are very good and capable operators, able to go out in difficult conditions and operate effectively. There are many superb ‘small ship’ navies out there which can achieve significant feats of seamanship, often in very dangerous conditions.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

But from an operational perspective, the most impressive and challenging feat to deliver is that of taking a carrier strike group on operations and keeping it there for the duration, staying on station and not being disrupted. The ability to fly and fuel is something that very few navies can do, and it requires exceptional skills to do properly.

The images emerging today of HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH refuelling with RFA TIDEFORCE while conducting flying operations are in many ways extremely simple pictures. They show an aircraft carrier at sea, taking on fuel while launching and recovering jets. Yet that simple image shows so much and speaks so loudly as to the huge achievements and progress made in recent years by the Royal Navy, that it is worthy of further and closer examination.

The first reason it is impressive is the sheer scale. It shows two vessels, between them totalling well over 100,000 tonnes of brand-new UK military shipping operating thousands of miles from home, and supported by other escort ships as part of a Carrier Strike Group.

Many navies aspire to operate a carrier, some acquire one. Very few can then take the next step and fuse the carrier, the escorts and the support ships together into one coherent package and then deploy it thousands of miles from home. The US and the French can, but the Russians? Well when they had an operational carrier, their version of a carrier strike group included a rescue tug for a reason.

This image captures the UK deploying a carrier and tanker to refuel as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Yet this seemingly straightforward image doesn’t do justice to the sheer complexity of what is going on here. You have effectively steered a nearly 70,000 tonne super carrier full of aircraft, explosives and 1500 people into very close proximity with a nearly 40,000 tonne tanker fuel of fuel and other highly explosive substances.

You’ve then steered a course while conducting an abeam refuelling operation which requires exceptional seamanship skills, and to top it all off, you’ve done so while not only turning the coupling into a threesome with HMS NORTHUMBERLAND joining the delicate dance, but you’ve decided to launch and recover F35 fighter jets into the bargain.

Refuelling in a 3 ship RAS while launching and recovering fixed wing aircraft is a fiendishly complex piece of seamanship that takes decades to master. It is hard, it is difficult and if it goes wrong, the consequences can be terrifying.

The next part of interest in the photos is the seemingly nonchalant way in which an F35 is launching or recovering. It’s a good reminder of the fruition of over 20 years of staffwork, R&D, construction and investment in the UK defence, shipbuilding and aerospace industry.

Tens of thousands of people across the UK helped make that image possible. It was people working in tiny companies providing sub components that fed into larger pieces of equipment. It was shipyard workers in yards around the country from Devon to Scotland building the blocks that formed the carrier.

It was the superb scientists working for DSTL and other research areas who did the calculations and tests in some of the world class defence research facilities to prove that it was safe for the carrier and RFA to do this. It was the teams that worked in the UK and beyond to help design and develop the F35 then build large parts of it here in the UK at BAE Systems factories as part of a wider global fighter programme.

So many thousands and thousands of people worked in some way on the Carrier Strike programme across so many domains to make this set of images possible. We often don’t think about it too much – preferring to focus our attention on the magnificent men and women from all three Services who serve at sea onboard the carrier, but without a huge supporting list from UK industry and beyond, this simply would not have been possible.

Other aspects worth considering is the sight of the Merlin helicopters parked across the flight deck – these giant helicopters and the team from 820 and 845NAS who have embarked are instrumental in the delivery of ASW and littoral manoeuvre for the carrier – helping provide really useful force capabilities and deploying troops in a hurry to support operations on the ground. While the QE may be a predominantly strike carrier in design and ethos, it is great to see other helicopters embarked too that help further enhance her utility and role.

More widely, the sheer scale of the flight deck is something to behold. Anyone who has seen a Merlin helicopter up close will known that they are very large beasts, and take up a lot of space. Yet here they seem scattered and almost diminutive on the flight deck. It’s a huge contrast to the images of the last time the RN was in this business about 10 years ago, when the deck of the carrier seems extremely cramped to launch and recover the Harrier.

This is a good reminder of the value of ‘buying big’ – the size of the flight deck means it is much easier and safer to operate aircraft, and makes for a much more efficient space to operate on. Unlike the INVINCIBLE class, which had really reached their capacity and were struggling with 16 aircraft on as part of the airwing, the QE has had similar numbers embarked and not even come close to half of the theoretical maximum air group capacity.

More widely the sight of the new TIDE class tanker serves as a good reminder of both the critical importance of the Royal Fleet Auxilliary, and the recent significant investment in new tanker vessels. The TIDES will be central to delivering fuel to the Carrier Strike Group, and we’re seeing the forming of a partnership that is likely to last for decades.

Logistics is rarely high profile or appreciated, but it is tankers like TIDEFORCE that mark the difference between being a local navy and a global navy. For the Royal Navy, it is the provision of modern civilian manned ships like the TIDEs that enable it to deploy globally to conduct operations – be it as part of a Carrier Strike Group, or in the West Indies leading disaster relief efforts, or in the Gulf where the BAY class LSD(A) is vital to supporting allied Mine Warfare operations. Without the RFA, the Royal Navy of today would struggle to be relevant or operate.

This then reminds us of the critical importance of getting the next generation of stores ships into service to provide the ‘dry stores’ for the carrier. Although the UK ostensibly has three of these vessels at present, two (FORT AUSTIN and ROSALIE) are in long term reserve or refit and seem highly unlikely to ever sail again – they are at nearly 40 years old, and also along with RFA ARGUS, the last survivors of the Falklands Task Force still in the fleet.

FORT VICTORIA is a relatively youngster (only dating back to the early 1990s) but is still getting older. While she will support the Carrier, the need for 3 FSS is vital and is arguably the single most important order waiting to be placed for the future fleet. Without FSS the CSG is far less potent and far more reliant on allies or shore support for supplies. Ensuring the RFA has the right ships, and the right amount of people to crew them is certainly likely to be a key priority for the next few years.

It isn’t just the hardware that matters in this image. More widely the skills required to carry out this level of manoeuvre are easily lost if not practised regularly, both flight deck operations and also the art of replenishment at sea. For the Royal Navy this photo would not have been possible without the support over 10 years of the US Navy, which responded magnificently to ensure pilots and flight deck crew got the training they needed to keep those skills alive after the 2010 SDSR saw the end of the ARK ROYAL.

The support from the US has been magnificent, and ensured that the UK has very quickly returned into the carrier strike game and quickly proven the QE Class as a platform that can support and sustain multi-national carrier strike operations. The embarkation of multiple USMC F35s (and crew) is testament to this support, and helps remind us that the UK and US will be joint stakeholders in the CSG concept for many years to come.

More widely the skills of the FOST organisation are also critical here – the journey from raw recruit on the train to RALEIGH, through to being part of a deck party able to conduct a RAS, or from an potential officer joining BRNC Dartmouth at the start of a journey that results in their being on the bridge helping during the evolution is long and hard. The Royal Navy has shown that its training schools, courses and exercises are able to take people, bring them into the force and give them the experience needed to succeed.

Many of the people involved in the RAS operation were in school while QE was being built. Quite a few probably hadn’t been born when the idea for the CSG first emerged back in the 1998 SDR. Yet they have been able to join a system that has trained them and equipped them to embark on a ship, sail thousands of miles from home and conduct some of the most difficult seamanship manoeuvres going. Their success in making this just routine is a direct credit to the training schools and Operational Sea Training organisations, without whom this would not have been possible.

Finally, perhaps the most important part of this piece is the photographer and media team. In a world where images speak louder than words, the WESTLANT19 deployment has excelled at quickly distributing astounding images, from the ships at sea in all weathers, to flight deck operations at night.

The images seen here are testament to the ships company and the work that they are doing, and planting it firmly in the minds of the British public and wider world. Around the globe media organisations covering this deployment are relying on information from the ship, and the images of her photographers.

This small team, ably supported by their opposite numbers on the other ships in the CSG is without doubt responsible for raising the profile of the QE and the work of the Royal Navy as a whole (the QE has almost 72,000 followers on Twitter at the moment). When you consider the likely reach the ships PR team has, it’s a really impressive feat.

The Royal Navy photographic branch perhaps don’t get the recognition they really deserve. Served by great people who have excellent training, they are responsible for capturing the images that will help sell the Royal Navy in the public domain. The ships Photographic team are responsible for capturing images that will be used for years to come to reassure the British public, and to remind our friends and allies that the Royal Navy, and the Carrier Strike Group is a very real and capable force indeed.

In the world of trying to secure influence and reach, the Photographers on board, supported by the media team are doing an amazing job of helping show what a superb asset HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH truly is.

The sea is a dangerous place, and somewhere that you don’t go out into for an easy life. Very few nations possess navies that can operate at sea on a sustained long term basis, and even fewer still have a global presence. Today, in late November 2019 the Royal Navy has ships active in the Caribbean, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Med, Gulf, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

 The Royal Navy today is a global navy, operating some of the most advanced warships and aircraft on the planet through people trained to exceptionally high standards to do the extraordinary as part of their ordinary daily routine. It is a truly global, truly world class force that sets the standard that other navies aspire to reach, and which does so through hard work and relying on, and trusting in its people to deliver success, in the same way it has done so for centuries. The technology may change, but the people are the same as always – the very best that the UK has to offer. We should all be very proud of them and the organisation they represent.