No - HMS PRINCE OF WALES is not a 'scrapyard'

 

Its never easy being the younger child. You don’t get anywhere near the same level of interest when key development milestones occur, people take your presence far more for granted and you often end up with your older siblings ‘hand me downs’ and cast offs. This is definitely true for warships where there is sometimes a perception that the first of class has a style and elan that other siblings lack. In the case of the QUEEN ELIZABETH class aircraft carriers it could be argued that QE has very much grabbed the headlines and glory while the PRINCE OF WALES (PWLS) has perhaps lacked as exciting an opportunity.

Following an incident which involved a propellor loss (something that befalls other navies too as the French carrier CHARLES DE GAULLE discovered), PWLS has had a challenging year in dry dock. The media are reporting it as the ship is broken, she needs a year in dock for extensive repairs and now todays Mail on Sunday story is that she has effectively become a ‘scrapyard’ for her older sibling, providing parts and materiel as a donor vessel. It has hard to think of a less loved vessel in the eyes of the media. What is actually going on is a little more complex and perhaps boring.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023.

In reality PWLS was sent to Scotland for an unplanned dry docking to resolve the issues with her propellor shaft. It seems to have become clear that this would take some months to resolve – which can feel a long time in a 24/7 newscycle, but realistically feels about right for repairing an extremely complex major warship and in line with historical timescales. The original plan for PWLS was that after she came back from the US last year, she’d not deploy in 2024 before undergoing a major capability upgrade anyway during the year. The purpose of this upgrade, which is standard for all newbuild warships, is to add on the new equipment and capabilities that have entered service since her build design was frozen many years ago.

Part of the challenge of building a complex warship is that at some point you need to lock the design down to enable construction to begin, rather than tinkering it to handle every new ‘oooh shiny’ moment as new technology emerges. To solve this ships will usually enter service as per the specs agreed years before, then a period in refit is planned early in her life once the ship is working and commissioned to add on the various equipment items that have entered use. This is about bringing the ship up to the most modern standard at the time – throughout her life she will then continue to receive regular upgrades like this as new technology is developed.

In this case the plan evolved so that as she was in dry dock anyway the RN seems to have decided to merge the two pieces of work. What this means is that rather than return to sea in a meaningful way, PWLS will have spent about a year in both unplanned repairs and planned refit. Again this period of time out of service isn’t unusual for a major warship – if you look through most vessels lifespans, refits of 1-3 years are entirely common. It can though appear bad news if you interpret this data as saying that the emergency repairs will take a year.

The next issue is whether the ship is a scrapyard-  no, she emphatically is not! All major military equipment can be seen as a floating / flying /moving assembly of spare parts brought together to work as one object. A modern warship is phenomenally complex involving literally millions of different items from the smallest screw and wiring through to engines, computer networks and weapon systems. It is perhaps easier to think of a warship as a living organism than a monolithic machine.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright 2023.

Over time parts will break and require fixing – sometimes there is a spare part immediately available in the naval supply chain. This can then be fitted and a replacement back ordered to ensure that stocks are always available. At other times there may be no spare part to hand – either supplies have run out and more are being made or the lead time for replacement is such that it can take a long time to get it manufactured and installed. At times like this all modern militaries rely on other platforms to function as donors to the one that needs a spare. This process is known as cannibalisation – the National Audit Office wrote a report about it back in 2017 and there was a Pinstripedline blog on the same subject. In the case of the RN, there were over 5 years about 3000 incidents of cannibalisation where parts were required urgently (70% of those parts cost under £5000) – at the same time roughly 300,000 parts were delivered through the supply chain on time or as required. In other words 98.6% of the time, the RN has got the parts it needed without cannibalising.

Usually spare parts are taken off ships at the lowest state of readiness, either because they have decommissioned – so for example HMS MONTROSE is now actively being stripped of all the parts that are in use elsewhere so that they can be reused. Ships in long term reserve also see this occur – the former HMS INTREPID was legendary for the state she was in due to the need to provide spare parts for HMS FEARLESS, particularly at the end of her life when both ships were nearly 40 years old and the original equipment manufacturers had long since vanished. The same applies to aircraft too, with many older jets becoming known as ‘Christmas trees’ due to the sheer number of parts stripped off them.

In the case of PWLS the challenge is that as one of only two ships, and the one currently at the lowest state of readiness, it makes far more sense to take a part of her, knowing the timelines to regenerate her for operations at sea, and knowing the supply chain will replace these parts. This decision means that the QE can continue in her current function as a high readiness strike carrier, while the supply chain produces the parts that can be backfitted into PWLS as and when needed. Over the next couple of years though the situation will reverse and QE will become the donor to PWLS as she goes into lower state of readiness and longer term refits.

That’s all there is to this story – a pragmatic decision has been taken to prioritise getting spare parts urgently to a ship that needs them by taking them off a ship that, right now, doesn’t need them. The ship is not turning into a scrapyard, she will regenerate and will return to sea as planned and has a very bright long term future ahead of her for many decades to come. Sometimes no matter how dramatic a story may sound, the reality is far more boring than people want it to be.  In summary, no HMS PRINCE OF WALES is not a scrapyard, she is merely doing what every military ship on the entire planet does occasionally and provide spare parts to a sister ship. This is entirely routine, every navy on the planet uses this process and there really is nothing to worry about here.