HMS Queen Elizabeth is progressing through flight trials with her F-35 jets.

In military aviation, a sortie is a combat mission of an individual aircraft, starting when the aircraft takes off. For example, one mission involving six aircraft would tally six sorties.

Aircraft Carrier Alliance Chief Engineer, Martin Douglass, discussed HMS Queen Elizabeth’s sortie rate last year.

“The Queen Elizabeth Class can fly 72 fast jet sorties per day – which can be increased if needed – and will give the UK a world class carrier strike capability for many years to come. She also has increased survivability because of the separation and distribution of power generation machinery throughout each ship.

The ship’s Artisan radar can track up to 800 potential targets at the same time and cut through radio ‘clutter’ generated by the equivalent of 10,000 mobile phones. The long range radar can track up to 1,000 contacts across a 250 mile radius both in the air or at sea. It’s an application of technology that’s already been proven on the Type 45s, but this time is linked to the Carrier’s organic capability to control a wide area of air and sea.”

The Queen Elizabeth class mark a change from expressing carrier power in terms of number of aircraft carried, to the number of sortie’s that can be generated from the deck.

Read more here.

George Allison
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
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29 COMMENTS

  1. A brilliant TV series of last year’s Westland just showed the level of enthusiasm of all involved in getting the QE up to combat readiness. Both carriers will pose a significant threat to those who oppose them and rightly so. Sadly, the inordinately long build period for both Type26 & 31’s to give them a thoroughly modern escort, is years away.

    • Hi maurice10,

      Do you or anyone else know if Chris Terrill sailed on this trip? I would love to see 4 F35’s take off in quick succession. It would really demonstrate how quick it can be to line up a go for it without the need to be hooked up to a cat. Cheers.

    • Hi Again,

      Just seen this article on the Type 31 programme on Save the Royal Navy.

      https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/when-will-the-first-royal-navy-type-31-frigate-enter-service/

      It seems that there has been a crafty change in wording for the major milestone for the T31. What was described as “in service in 2023” is now “in the water in 2023”. Given that in the water is when the ship is launched that is a biiggg change, say about 2 years! So T31 not likely in service until 2025 and that assumes no issues with the first of class.

      There are a couple of high risk points in the programme not least of which is linking the Thales combat management system (can’t remember what is called) with the Sea Ceptor missile system which is a new combination. So plenty of opportunity for it not to work, although to be fair that’s system integration for you. More of an art form than science.

      • Cards on the table time. I reckon the first 31’s won’t be fully commissioned before 2026, so that will mean the old 23’s will have to labour on until 2033/34 before they are paid off. The type23’s are great ships but by the end of the next decade, they will be held together with gaffer tape!

        One other factor will be Scottish Independence, and the UK Government policy of only building warships in the UK. The logistic consequences of moving the fleet of new ship builds could result in many years of delay? Maybe, the policy of where warships are built will have to be revisited, for the sake of RN operations?

        • Yup, I’d agree with that. I was letting me optimism out for a little airing given all the good news the QEC programme has given us the last couple of years, but yeh the frigates are still a challenge that needs sorting out.

          As for Scottish independence I think you are right. There would be significant issues to overcome. I have been thinking about that for sometime. The biggest issue is training new engineers at all levels. Assuming some of the Clyde work force don’t follow the work we’d have to train a lot of people from scratch. That’s 15 years through apprenticeships, uni and on site triaing and mentoring. Did engineering myself and its a loonng process, but it can be fun as well!

          Then there is the thorny issue of moving the work south. Two options here 1) accept the status quo, or 2) move the work. I cannot see the British (ie English, Welsh and Northern Irish) tax payers wanting to spend billions of defence pounds in Scotland after Independence so the move South is the most likely option. But there’s nothing to like about it that’s for sure.

          So how to do it. 1) big bang and drag it all South on I-Day +1, or 2) a phased move. The latter is the only sensible option that I can see – ignoring [divorce] politics for the moment. So we could take a similar approach to the recent Korean built RFA’s. Let the Clyde yards finish off the basics and then bring the ships South for final systems integration. Hugely complex, disruptive and expensive when applied to an escort.

          Then there is the carrier’s no dry dock South of the boarder that they can fit into! Build a new one? Hugely, expensive and unless we get a serious injection of focused project management with a huge spoonful of can do attitude very very long winded process..! Most likely approach – split the refits, mission kit South of the boarder and hull and machinary in Rosyth! May be?

          But the industrial issues fade when you start to think about the security issues. On I-day +1 Scotland would most likely be outside of NATO so there could be some serious issues about NATO sourced kit, especially US sourced kit, which currently enters very level of the UK supply chain.

          I’m going to stop there, that is a way too complex issue. Just sorting out the UK politics through in third party interests and..!

  2. I remember seeing it suggested that Prince of Wales and Queen Elizabeth were likely to meet up at sea, once QE had returned from the States and prior to PWLS first entry into Portsmouth. According to ship tracker, PWLS is now off the IOW, so I presume this plan has now changed?

    • There was a picture of POW off Dartmouth in yesterday’s Times, so she is obviously doing her trials quite locally. Does anyone know when she is scheduled to enter Portsmouth for the first time, or indeed when QE is due back? Also any good sources of video of the trials would be gratefully received.

      • POW is due to enter Portsmouth tomorrow (16/11/2019) passing the tower at 14:00. Her Twitter feed has some videos and photos up of her time at sea.

        Shame there isn’t a photo op yet for them both at sea together, though I’m sure there will be in the future.

        • Thanks Lusty. Sadly I won’t be able to be there. I was one of the thousands that turned out for QE two years ago, I expect there will be quite a lot out tomorrow.

          • No worries. I’ve not been up for an entry yet – I’ve only seen QE when she has twice visited Mounts Bay in Cornwall. To answer your other question, QE is due back before Christmas, though I’m not too sure if a precise date is publically available yet.

  3. I have been so impressed in the way this ship and the programme as a whole has progressed and developed since the dark days of uncertainty surrounding the PoW. Helped of course by Chris Terrill’s great documentary, you get the feeling that someone somewhere in the ACA / MoD / Royal Navy have actually done some very long term planning and preparation for the regeneration of our big deck carrier capability. We should be so proud of what so many people have achieved. Awsome.

    As they say,”Prior, Preparation and Planning Prevents P*** Poor Performance.” 😉

  4. 72 sorties a day, which means 3 an hour.
    Or 3 per day for each of the 24 F35’s – the standard complement.
    Sounds like the quoted sortie rate is limited by the jets on board, and sortie time plus the time required to turn one round and get it ready for the next?..

      • I thought it was 24, but if it is 36, all the better. Which would reduce sorties per aircraft/pilot to a more sensible 2 a day.

        I wonder what maximum number they could fly a day in under surge conditions: would depend on how many of the 70 aircraft were F35’s and how many helicopters.
        That said, I hope that’s never necessary.

        • In reality it will only be 24 for normal deployments but in Gulf War 3 scenario the carriers could comfortably host 36 and push themselves to 48 at full capacity. So 72 sorties to me is based on 2 sorties each for 36 aircraft.

    • I just did some back of an envelope calculations based on the F35b. Depending on the speed that is used to estimate / determine the 505nm combat radius just getting there and back could take nearly 2.5hrs assuming subsonic cruise. Super cruise bring it down to about 90 minutes. All of that excludes any combat phase.

      That’s a long time to be in an intense combat environment and you have to add your briefing and debriefing times onto the sortie count. I recon 2 sorties per pilot, from a carrier is a surge effort to say the least.

      Now if you had a bunch of drones..?

    • That’s a big issue. It was my one issues with the final episode of this 2nd series of “Britain’s Biggest Warship”. They made a big deal of the F-35 making its first “bomb run” (with concrete dummy bombs) and at the end of the program even included in the summary the number of sorties flown and the number of bombs “dropped”. I put “dropped” in quotes because I wonder if this was a bit of TV spin and “jettisoned” might have been the more accurate term. Since that first deployment only took the first steps on SRVL testing (that we saw) I suspect it might have been more a case of loading bombs to push forward testing of what load could be carried on take off, and working up the handling procedures for arming the jets of course, but the footage presented as the carrier showing its teeth for the first time when an F-35 droped its bombs (at low altitude with no attempt to target anything and all splash-splash-splash-splash in a neat row) was actually a necessary quick jettison of the bombs since the SRVL testing hadn’t got to the stage where they wanted to risk anything more than whatever fuel load was left so those bombs had to go in order to be able to do a totally vertical landing (or an early testing stage lightly loaded SRVL). I’m not knocking the program overall (neither the documentary nor the carrier work-up) but that was the one bit of the documentary where I thought it maybe misrepresented it a bit and over-egged the cake.

      Hopefully SRVL will continue to evolve as more and more ambitious testing gets done and we will see both heavier loads landed and higher sea states accommodated.

      One other thing that worried me a bit about the SRVL test they did show was how it took a presumably crack test pilot three attempts to get it right. That made it look really difficult and tricky which worries me because I thought that one other upside of not going cat & trap was not needing to keep pilots specifically certified for carrier ops but if SRVL really is very tough then wouldn’t there still be an issue keeping as many pilots as possible specifically certified for SRVL which seems to diminish that particular upside quite a bit and limit the ability to surge RAF aircraft onto the carrier (unless they are all willing to jettison unused ordnance prior to a conventional vertical landing of course).

      • The issue with the test pilot taking three attempts is due to the flight software not being tied down for SRVLs. This is so they can narrow down the parameters. Don’t forget this test was done in pretty benign conditions, so they will continue to get the parameters just so and expand the weather envelope. I would expect a form of automation once the regime is finalised.

        What was interesting though is how short the aircraft stopped, about level with air control. Therefore they should be able to do it at a faster speed or heavier load and still have room to spare.

        • Yes, I thought the short landing was interesting and impressive.
          I hope that with parameters set and computerised it will be easier.

  8. A simple way to get “increased survivability” would be adding a couple of tiers to their SAM defences, such as RAM & sea ceptor. Bad things happen in war & you can’t ever guarentee having enough functional escorts.

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