The Success of Carrier Strike Versus The Lack of Understanding in the Media

 

The Royal Navy has been humiliated once again. The mighty warship HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH has set sail carrying just 8 jets, barely a third of her ostensible capacity. This is in sharp contrast to the US and French navies which apparently sail with carriers laden down with modern jets, while Russia is doubtless hardly intimidated. What manner of buffoonery is going on at the Admiralty? Thankfully Lewis Page, a man who should be admired for the way his total lack of any knowledge about Defence hasn’t prevented him from becoming a Defence commentator has written on the subject. 

One of the most tediously depressing aspects of the Carrier Strike programme is the way that people wilfully misinterpret what is going on with it in the most negative way imaginable. This then creates a public perception that the UK is somehow failing, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. This article will try to tackle some of these issues head on to try and explain what is really happening.

Carrier Strike is a good way of describing the acquisition, construction, entry into service, trials, integration and operational delivery of the various different major pieces of military equipment that will deliver an operational capability. The most visible part of this is the two QE Class Carriers (QEC) that will host the airwing, which in turn consists of the F35 project, the Crowsnest AEW capability and wider aspects of the airwing and escort forces. Carrier Strike is about bringing all of these different groups together and fusing them into a truly integrated capability that can deliver airpower, people and effect globally for the next 50 years. It is not something you can just ‘do’ straight off the drawing board.

The two most important parts of this have been the QEC hulls and the F35. There has been a lengthy gestation period, with the ships announced in 1998 as a requirement, QE entering construction in 2009 and entering service in 2017. This marked the completion of construction, but equally the beginning of a lengthy period of trials and integration – you cannot just operate an aircraft carrier from the outset. You need to understand performance, limitations (particularly for weather) and how the ship works and bring this together to ensure that the ship works, is functional and is safe for operations in all respects. This took several years to do, collecting data, understanding what it meant and where necessary making changes.  

At the same time the F35 programme, which also has its gestation in the early 1990s was taking time to deliver, with the UK and other operators working to develop the design, bring it into service and ensure that the aircraft type was capable of operating to the required standard. Again, this is an incredibly complex programme that involves multiple nations working together to introduce a genuinely world beating aircraft into service – this isn’t something you do overnight.

The plan for the UK has always been to manage the introduction of these capabilities over a period of many years, making sure they work, that they deliver what is needed of them and that the full range of required capabilities is installed and works. The current UK estimate is that this point will be reached in 2026 when Carrier Strike meets its so-called ‘Full Operating Capability’ (FOC) – namely the point when the integrated set of systems are fully delivered, work as intended and meet the requirements. It will have taken nearly 10 years hard work to get here, precisely because these systems are so complex and need time to get right. This sounds a long time (and it is), but in the context of the carrier strike lifecycle, it represents less than 10% of the planned lifetime of the QEC in UK service. This is about delivering a capability fit for use into the 2060s, not just for the 2020s.

What this process has meant is that the UK is intentionally not deploying large carrier airwings from the word go because a lot of the force build up is still ongoing. For example, the F35 force is still being delivered, with airframes arriving in the UK on a regular basis – right now there are roughly 30 F35s in UK service of a total initial order of 48. A further 20-30 are likely to be ordered soon, and further buys may follow in future years. Again, this sounds a long period, but modern fighter aircraft cannot be built quickly – the author was told that realistically it is a 2–3-year process to manufacture and build a modern fighter jet given the complexity of the airframe. This isn’t WW2 where Spitfires or Liberators can be churned off the production line in days, if not hours. The UK is one of many nations buying F35 and aircraft delivery slots are planned years ahead of schedule.  This means that right now there are not enough physical jets in the UK to embark a full airwing.

The UK has gotten around this in two ways – firstly it has planned delivery of the airframes to align ramping up of the capability – more airframes will be available as the Carrier Strike concept nears maturity. Secondly the UK is working with the USMC to embark in a truly integrated manner their own F35 squadrons on major deployments like OP FORTIS in 2021. It is worth noting that the UK is the only country in the world which possesses an aircraft carrier designed from the ground up to embark foreign F35s – its not just the landing on the deck, but the ability to embark support crews, maintenance plans, IT networks, mission planning and so on in a way that meets national needs. The incredible part of the QEC is that they provide a deck that enables the USMC to plan, operate and deliver missions to meet US national needs from an allied flight deck – no other ship in the world can do this outside of the US Navy.

It is a curious irony that rather than focus on the incredible access and influence that QEC provides the UK – essentially providing the US Navy with a pair of aircraft carriers that meet their standards and can embark their people as part of their own battleforce, the media in the UK have seen it almost as a sign of national shame that the USMC is having to embark. Again, it highlights the immaturity of the media debate where we on the one hand seem to belittle ourselves for not mattering to the US and not having influence, but on the other we belittle ourselves for providing an incredibly valuable capability that the US really values because somehow we’re losers for relying on the US to embark. There is a sense that whatever the RN does, the media will portray it as a bad thing, not something to be proud of.

This brings us to the current deployment, where QE has deployed with ‘just’ 8 F35s embarked. This is seen as a bad thing because she is only deploying with a fraction of the airwing she could embark. We need to consider a few things here as a counter to this. Firstly, we should remember that it is, historically, incredibly rare for the UK or any other operator to embark full airwings except for major operations. If you look at the history of the INVINCIBLE class their usual peacetime airwing for deployments was around 8 Sea Harrier jets – in later life bolstered with some RAF GR7/9s, although as the numbers grew, this increased reliance on accompanying support ships to embark the helicopters. It was rare for these ships to embark more the 8-9 jets at a time. We should also be wary of making like for like comparisons with older carriers – the CTOL HMS ARK ROYAL carried 26 jets in theory for her final years (12 Phantoms and 14 Buccaneers) – but it would be interesting to contrast both availability and capability versus the more modern F35 – it is likely that one F35 can probably deliver far more precise effect than several Buccaneers.

Other nations are similar – on paper the French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle can carry about 36-40 aircraft, but in reality the single largest number of jets she has ever embarked is 30, which occurred on one single exercise in 2019 (Op Clemenceau) while the average number of fast jets embarked is about 20 aircraft per deployment. The usual airwing for most exercises is usually 18-22 jets, historically split between the venerable Etendard and the now ageing Rafale. This is still a very capable airwing, but it is not the 40 jets some people assume that France routinely deploys. In a similar vein, the US Navy does not, despite some suggestions in the article to the contrary, deploy with full hangars. During the Cold War many US Carriers deployed with 80 plus aircraft on board, posing significant deck park and hangar space challenges. Today a standard airwing will usually comprise 44-48 F35s & F18s and a maximum airwing of 64 aircraft – significantly below the theoretical maximum capability. The US Navy does not deploy fully loaded airwings in peacetime, so why should we expect the Royal Navy to?

If you look at where the RN is on its roadmap to Carrier Strike, this deployment is about continuing to regenerate aviation skills and ensure there is a strong pool of experience among both pilots, flight deck crews and engineers to safely operate the F35 at sea and generate it for missions. These skills are hard won and easily lost, which is why the RN spent so much time keeping detachments of FAA personnel embarked on US carriers from 2010-2017 to help maintain the ‘big deck operations’ understanding in their DNA. This deployment will help to regenerate these skills at sea, while also retaining enough aircraft on land to support the wider Lightning force. You don’t need 24 aircraft at sea to do this.

The bigger challenge is that sending 24 jets to sea now would probably break the Lightning force in that there are, at the moment, about 30 qualified F35 pilots in front line service. Sending the majority of them to sea for several months may be impressive but will heavily disrupt the wider pattern of training for the force. There is also the issue of ground crew support – one of the notable takeaways from the report into the loss of the F35 on the Op FORTIS deployment is that there were relatively few trained crew and engineers to support the jets – much fewer than the USMC equivalent. There are only a finite number of support personnel available, so taking them all to sea reduces the ability to conduct wider training on land. You need to look at the bigger picture and realise that there are finite assets and finite people and you cannot send everything on one peacetime exercise.

There is no doubt that there have been challenges in the generation of the Carrier Strike capability. COVID had a huge impact across a range of issues which has delayed matters and made it harder to carry out some training and trials. The unplanned challenges last year for HMS PRINCE OF WALES, while repairable have made things harder to conduct a lot of the late stage flying trials – for example she was due to go to the US to conduct further F35 integration trials that have now slipped to this year. There remains challenges with generating enough people with the right skills and experience at all ranks & rates as well as ensuring the right level of serviceability and availability for aircraft. But these challenges can, and will, be overcome. We should be honest and recognise that things have not gone exactly to plan, but also lets not overblow this.

Instead, lets take a positive view. Right now the Royal Navy has a pair of strike carriers at sea conducting operations globally. One is deployed in support of NATO operations and will play a key role in deterring Russia and expanding our links with fellow NATO navies. This is a return to the early Cold War years when RN strike carriers played a critical part in contributing to NATO plans to defend the Atlantic from Soviet incursions (although without the nuclear strike mission). At the same time a second aircraft carrier is in the USA conducting major integration trials and is likely to carry out wider missions as needed (it is notable this deployment is occurring close to Hurricane season in the West Indies where already HMS DAUNTLESS is on station to support British Overseas Territory interests in the event disaster relief is needed).

We’re going to see a lot more of this – a globally focused navy sending strike carriers where they need to go, with the airwing they need to have embarked for the mission at hand. They won’t always deploy with a full airwing, but they won’t always need a full airwing. Instead we’re in a position now where as of 2025 the UK will be capable of surging a strike carrier to sea with a peacetime airwing and also a larger airwing of at least 24 F35s if required (in 2025 the next major CSG deployment will have at least 24 UK F35s plus potentially USMC as well embarked). You’d think people would be pleased about this – but no, all some commentators want to do is whinge about the fact that they’ve got a pony and not got a unicorn.

For starters we get the constant moaning about lack of jets, despite the fact that, as has been explained, there are really good reasons for this. Then we hear moaning about the fact that we can’t deploy two ships with full airwings – despite this never being a requirement. The whole point of the QEC project is to ensure that the UK can provide, with near 100% availability, the capability to deploy a strike carrier with appropriate airwing. The second carrier can, in a crisis deploy, but could well embark US jets. There has never been any suggestion from the Royal Navy that both ships will go to sea with full airwings. Despite this people seem angry that the Royal Navy isn’t doing something it has never set out to do in the first place.

People are angry too that the RAF are involved. The supporters of the RN have been angry at the RAF since 1 April 1918 and carry this vendetta with them in a way that makes a Balkan family feud seem rational and reasonable. Its utterly pathetic to watch some of the comments online about how the RAF is trying to get one over on the RN, or demands that the RAF should be abolished. There is something really excruciating about seeing grown men angry at the idea that the RAF has a central role to play in naval aviation. It feels that some people are still angry at the entirely appropriate decision to cancel CVA01 in 1966 (57 years ago), despite the RN gaining two incredible aircraft carriers vastly more capable than CVA01 would ever have been. The message is simple – grow up.

Of course some people are angry that we got the F35 – apparently we should have bought the F18 instead. A great plan foiled by the problem that doing so would have killed the long term sustainability of the UK aviation industry, and meant that early in the QEC life, it would be operating an obsolete aircraft in isolation, while the US had transition to the F35 – a bit like the days when the UK was the sole operator of Polaris. The result would have been a cheap but obsolete force that would not have been a credible Day 1 / Night 1 capability and of limited utility to the US Navy, the key RN partner. Purchased at the cost of destroying our ability to design and build advanced aircraft like JSF and latterly the Tempest programme.

Then we get onto the farcical nonsense about ‘should have been a conventional carrier’. This tired line has been trotted out for decades now. The UK did briefly look at converting one carrier into a CTOL variant in the 2010 SDSR, which was abandoned very quickly afterwards when it became clear that to do so would have resulted in one of the two ships being sold / scrapped as a savings measure. The UK would then have become a part time carrier navy like France, able to deploy occasionally but not year round. There would also have been huge challenges in generating a sustainable carrier strike capability as a new trainer aircraft would have been  required. This would have necessitated the cost of a new bespoke fast jet trainer fleet, and programming the carriers time to ensure it could qualify and requalify pilots to safely operate at sea – this would have been particularly hard to do in years when the carrier was in refit, meaning an increased reliance on the US or France for help. People always forget that the CTOL conversion was abandoned for good reasons – it would have cost billions extra, it would have reduced our availability of an operational aircraft carrier and it would have left us with an orphan fleet of jets that had not really got wider operational utility.  That’s even before we consider that the catapult that would have been fitted had years of teething problems on the USS FORD, meaning that QEC would be years behind schedule by now. The National Audit Office rightly highlighted that the vast costs of adaption and refitting CTOL would have been a huge waste of money to deliver a worse capability than we have now.

Linked to this is the next whinge which is ‘we can’t do crossdecking with our allies as we don’t have CTOL’. Its hard to explain just how annoying it is to hear this constant rubbish – historically no nation has ever cross decked with another except the USS ROBIN/HMS VICTORIOUS in WW2, when the UK and USN briefly operated together. Beyond this there have been very small ‘land on, take off’ visits and very occasional overnight stays. Yet cross decking is held up as the great white hope of CTOL – but its proponents completely ignore that the Royal Navy is currently doing ‘cross decking’ to a level previously unheard of by embarking USMC F35s as part of the integrated airwing. We’ve literally got the best possible cross decking outcome imaginable, far beyond what any other nation can do, and still our bloody internet admirals whinge and moan. Will nothing ever satisfy them?

This whole saga is quite depressing. In the UK we have built two world beating strike carriers that will provide naval capability for the next 50 years. We have built something that the US Navy is keen to engage and support the RN with to a level that it does with no other navy. We have a genuinely ‘best in class’ capability and are putting ships to sea with a level of capability that RN supporters have spent decades dreaming of, and still its ‘fans’ find reasons to moan. The media seem determined to make this incredible project seem a failure, not because it is, but because they are apparently unable to understand that there is a plan, that you don’t always send maximum scale airwings to sea and that strangely enough the RN and RAF do know what they’re doing. What a depressing state of affairs to find ourselves in.