Aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth will enter Portsmouth on Wednesday the 4th of December at 10:25am.

HMS Queen Elizabeth will join her sister ship HMS Prince of Wales.

It’s been a busy three months away for the Portsmouth-based carrier which hosted British F-35 Lightning jets for the first time at sea as part of the WESTLANT19 deployment.

Related image
CGI of how the two vessels will berth.

Commanding Officer of HMS Queen Elizabeth, Cdre Steve Moorhouse said:

“This has been an extremely successful deployment for HMS Queen Elizabeth. It’s all been about increasing the complexity and tempo of our activity, building the capability of the strike group and testing ourselves in a demanding training environment with our close partners from the US Navy and Marine Corps. Embarking UK F-35B Lightning for the first time and integrating them within the carrier strike group is a significant milestone and we are well set for an equally demanding 2020 and our first operational deployment in 2021.”

Captain James Blackmore, Commander of the Air Group, added:

“The five-week period of operational tests with UK F-35s was significant and historic. As the last pilot to fly Harrier from the deck of HMS Ark Royal in 2010, it filled me with tremendous pride to see UK fixed wing aircraft operate once more from a British carrier.”

George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

28 COMMENTS

    • Medium is something of Charles De Gaulle’s or Izumo’s ilk. By any metric, QE are full size fleet carriers

      • Indeed part of a small group of large carriers I would say, with US ones being perhaps super large one could say. Would be rediculous to claim you need to be around 90 to 100,000 tons to be considered Large methinks. So heavyweight and Super heavyweight for me in reality as ships of that size have ‘potentially’ similar capabilities just more depth the larger it is. Medium with more limited capabilities would be around 40 to 50,000 tons I reckon and below that small, compact or some other denonimation of choice with much greater overall limitations.

        • I’m just trying to keep in mind that for all our power (and it is great), we are not in the same league as the US. I converted to the Thin Pinstriped Line school, but I worry I went to far that way. I was thinking our carriers were exactly as powerful as those of the US which is ridiculous.

          • They are designed to be able to ‘sub’ for US carriers, so in theory the capabilities aren’t too far apart. ‘Surge’ sortie rate for a QE is supposedly fairly close to what Nimitz class can achieve in normal conditions, F-35B has a somewhat shorter range than the C variant, and a somewhat reduced payload (due to the compromises imposed by the lift fan), but it’s still pretty good. Possibly the biggest shortcoming is the difference in capability of Hawkeye versus Crowsnest for AEW, but presumably land based AWACS could provide support in many deployment scenarios? Whether a QE, Nimitz or Ford class strike group would actually survive in a no-holds-barred conflict against a genuine ‘near peer’ adversary is open to debate because the theory has never been tested. Thankfully. US carriers mostly conduct operations against adversaries with fairly limited capabilities, and both US and UK carriers should be comparably effective in those kind of scenarios.

      • I’m just trying to keep in mind that for all our power (and it is great), we are not in the same league as the US. I converted to the Thin Pinstriped Line school, but I worry I went to far that way. I was thinking our carriers were exactly as powerful as those of the US which is ridiculous.

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