Sailing Into A Storm...

 

HMS PRINCE OF WALES (PWLS) has reportedly spent more time ‘in dock’ being repaired for various problems since commissioning than she has at sea. In the eyes of the media she is a broken ship unable to do her job – is this accurate or fair or is the picture more complex than portrayed? It is very easy to look at statistics and reach the assumption that a ship is somehow broken because she isn’t at sea. It is also easy to look at minor incidents and assume that these in turn have much bigger impact than the reality of the case. In the case of PWLS, the real picture is actually more positive than some may have you believe.

The PWLS is the second ship of the QUEEN ELIZABETH class aircraft carriers, designed to provide a large platform capable of embarking up to 40 aircraft and operating globally as required. Displacing some 65,000 tonnes and some 284m long, she is the joint largest warship ever constructed in the UK and one of the largest, and most complex, warships on the planet.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023.

She initially sailed for sea trials in late 2019, arriving in Portsmouth in November 2019 when she was then commissioned (e.g. formally taken on by the Royal Navy and became an official warship) in December 2019. As is always the case with modern warships, after they have completed their trials and formal build, they then undergo a series of ‘capability updates’ to install changes or new equipment that has been developed since the design was signed off (in this case many years previously) and ensure that the ship is as up to date as possible. The intention was always that the first year – 18 months of her life would be spent on trials, getting the ship up to speed and operational and helping ensure that she was ready to take on 50 years of tasking. What went wrong?

In early 2020 she suffered very minor flooding, given more prominence and attention than it warranted due to sailors filming the flood, rather than fighting the flood. Although quickly repaired, it gained a lot of interest and the perception that the ship was ‘broken’. Later in 2020 she suffered a more serious flood that damaged the electrical cabling in the ship and meant she was under repair from around October 2020 until April 2021.

These dates are important because on the surface it looks as though she was undergoing very lengthy repairs. But cast your minds back to 2020/21 and the lockdown imposed by hard-partying Downing Street hypocrites, and you will remember that for much of this period the UK had effectively ground to a halt thanks to Covid. It is (thankfully) hard to remember much now about how paralysed the UK (and wider world) was during this period, but huge swathes of the UK economy ceased to function while people were kept at home.

It is almost certain that the reason these repairs took so long was because of covid related challenges, be it restrictions on access to the ship, for fear of infecting the crew, or just complete disruption in the supply chain. Like many armed forces across the world, lockdowns had a challenging impact on the Royal Navy as disruption was imposed on the supply chain and way of working. It is no surprise that what should have been a relatively straight forward repair was disrupted for far longer than likely necessary due to these restrictions.  This meant that for much of her early life the ship and her planned programme of trials, testing and work up was heavily disrupted due to events entirely outside of her control.

The first key thing to note is that ships alongside are not always ‘docked for repair’. In the case of PWLS she was alongside due to delays caused by COVID and also the huge disruption to the wider exercise and deployment programme in 2020 and 21 that led to major challenges. For example the Carrier Strike Group deployment, although successful had very few actual port visits for much of their trip due to the need to adhere to local covid restrictions, while through 2020 and 21 many other RN ships programmes were changed or cancelled and deployments kept to a minimum.

The second point to note is that ships alongside can be doing maintenance and not repairs. There is perhaps a lack of understanding about how complicated ships are, how much time and effort is required in preventative maintenance to ensure that vastly complex ships can do the job expected of them and that this can, and does, require time in port to ensure things are working as planned. When you look at how complicated the CVF platform is – fundamentally a floating airfield and ammunition dump, powered by vast engines and full of radars, electronics and weaponry to direct and fight a war with, as well as life support for the population of a small town, you realise that this means a lot of things have to work well together to ensure everything works properly. This level of complexity means that all warships have planned maintenance periods to help ensure that everything works as planned and that when the ships go to sea, they do so in the knowledge that their systems should be up to date and working.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023.

The role of warships is not to spend each and every day at sea steaming into stormy waters. Ships need time in port, not only to repair and maintain equipment, but to give their crew a rest, conduct resupply and also to carry out the minutiae of daily life onboard from defence diplomacy to taking the rubbish out. This does not mean that a ship isn’t available for sea, or that in a crisis she couldn’t put to sea, its just that there is no plan for them to be at sea all the time. This is important partly to give the machinery a break (operate anything on an enduring basis and it will soon break down for want of maintenance) but also ensure that the crew have a reasonable home/life balance too. Keeping people constantly at sea may sound fun or what ‘proper navies’ do, but it also causes immense disruption to family life and can quickly result in people leaving when the line between ‘reasonable’ and ‘unreasonable’ expectations is crossed. There is no point having an expensive warship if you have not got the crew to operate it.

So is PWLS broken? At the moment yes she is. In August 2022 the ship put to sea, but for various reasons she seems to have suffered an issue with her propellor shaft that resulted in her requiring an unplanned emergency dry docking in Rosyth. At this stage it is fair to say that she is ‘in dock for repair’ and that these repairs will likely last a couple more months. She will then return to Portsmouth to enter into a maintenance period – a sensible decision to ensure that all the constituent parts of the ship work as planned after several months without being used, and will deploy from there in line with the plan that the Royal Navy has for her.

The unplanned docking is an uncomfortable story for the RN as no navy likes it when their ships break down unexpectedly. The thing is though that ships of all nations have a habit of breaking down unexpectedly – the French carrier Charles De Gaulle lost her propellor during sea trials, while the USS FORD has had a long litany of trials and tribulations on her heavily delayed journey to enter service. Meanwhile the Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov seems to break down every time her hull is exposed to salt water… The point is that these things do happen, particularly with the most complicated machines ever to sail the surface of the ocean.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023.

But does this mean that the ship is now broken and having a significant impact on the Royal Navy? The fact that last year the QE was able to cover for PWLS by sailing to New York and other parts of the US was proof of the flexibility of a two carrier force, but it still caused some disruption to her planned programme. The trials that the PWLS was due to carry out with the F35 still need to be done, although they will likely slip to 2023 now. But from an operational perspective although some trials have been delayed, the impact on the front line operational fleet has been limited – all along the RN plan has been that PWLS would not be at full operational capability until 2023, so in practical terms its not really had an impact (yet) on plans for her employment within the fleet. Although there will doubtless be some minor slips or delays to plans, the bigger picture means that this is unlikely to have had as bad an impact as some may think. The challenge now for the RN is to get the ship ready for sea again by mid-2023 and then out on tasking as required.

It is unfair then to say that PWLS has spent more of her time being repaired than at sea, her early years have been marred by a series of unfortunate incidents that have quickly been repaired. She has had programmes disrupted due to Covid (like many other ships) and has had only one incident that has caused significant disruption, which is a problem that is now rapidly being fixed. The challenge with building aircraft carriers is that you don’t get to build lots of trial versions then series produce them, you need instead to build them and trial/test and employ them using the production models – this means it can take time to iron out the bugs and make sure everything is working as planned. The ship has a 50 year lifespan and it is worth noting that she will be extremely hard worked for many decades to come.  This period will quickly be forgotten and in time will be seen as part of the challenge that comes from operating a global navy with some of the most advanced warships on the planet. If going to sea was easy, everyone would be doing it – it is a measure of how complex and challenging this business is that it can take time to be ready to for sea in all respects.