British F-35B stealth fighters have embarked on the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales and are flying from her deck as the fleet flagship conducts heightened vigilance in the North Atlantic under NATO’s Arctic Sentry mission, the Royal Navy has said.
The Lightning jets, drawn from 617 Squadron and 809 Naval Air Squadron, embarked on the carrier from their home base at RAF Marham in Norfolk, and have been operating from her deck as she works alongside NATO allies in the High North. 617 Squadron, the Royal Air Force’s Dambusters, and 809 Naval Air Squadron, the Fleet Air Arm unit reformed to fly the jet, together provide the United Kingdom’s carrier-borne fifth-generation strike capability.
The F-35B is a fifth-generation, multirole stealth fighter capable of air-to-air and air-to-ground missions as well as intelligence gathering and electronic warfare, and its short take-off and vertical landing design allows it to operate from the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, which have no catapults or arrestor wires. Embarking the jets turns the carrier into a mobile airbase able to project that capability across the region.
HMS Prince of Wales is conducting what the Royal Navy describes as extra vigilant activity, known as Arctic Sentry, in the North Atlantic, the NATO mission introduced earlier this year to step up watchfulness across the High North, the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic in response to increased Russian activity in the region. Operating in the High North and the wider Euro-Atlantic, the Royal Navy says, the United Kingdom is demonstrating its contribution to NATO’s deterrence and defence first hand.
The carrier has been joined by the destroyer HMS Duncan and the tanker RFA Tidespring on Operation Firecrest, the United Kingdom’s deployment for the first quarter of 2026, intended to demonstrate the country’s commitment to delivering advanced warfighting capability to both NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force. Working with NATO allies and JEF partners, the Royal Navy says, is business as usual for the United Kingdom and its commitment to security in the region.
Fake news, I read in the daily mail and the independent this ship was broken down and I heard on X that we don’t have any planes. Munro assured me we can’t put a single credible warship to sea just this morning
Check your sources George 😀
Good to know the F35B aircraft are flying in the high north in a show of strength to potential aggressors. Any idea how many aircraft are on board?
It did say fighter Jets, so plural therefore at least 2 🤦♂️😜
12 F35s as per Navy Lookout
Which is more than enough to do the ASW job that the Invincibles used to do.
4- Helicopters and a few F35Bs …?
On a unreliable 70000t Warship !!!!
12 F-35B are a reasonable size of force to exercise with. I’m not sure if PoW is particularly unreliable. Maybe that’s just new carriers generally. We know the USS Ford has had its teething problems. It would be interesting to know the reliability of the Chinese carriers, such as the Shandong (commissioned in the same year as the Prince of Wales). It has certainly needed some major overhauls in the last ten years.
I know it’s not that accurate but was watching the grim reaper battle of the active ships vs the russian ship that opened fire in the channel. It’s shocking when you think how we lack any real ground or air based anti ship missiles, considering we are a island nation.
The Russian ship was broken down and not under way.
So a dumb bomb or other missile could do the job.
I’ve said it before but I often think that the relegation of the carrier borne anti shipping role to Wildcat helicopters is akin to the carriers of early WWII being stuck with the Fairey Swordfish biplane; a platform that was well regarded and could perform its duties in the right circumstances, but was less than ideal when compared to some of the high performance monoplane options that flew off the carriers of other combatants. I hope one day our F-35s get an anti ship weapon.