Aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth will soon depart Portsmouth to conduct training in UK waters with F-35 jets.

Aircraft from 207 Squadron, the UK’s F-35 Lightning training squadron, will join the carrier in UK waters within the next week or two.

It hasn’t been revealed where in UK waters the latest round of fixed wing flights will take place, but we’ll do our best to keep you updated! The purpose of the training, according to OC 207 Squadron is “full Carrier and LSO Qualifications for 207 Squadron instructors – and the first F-35 CQ in UK waters.“

Next year, HMS Queen Elizabeth will deploy operationally with two frigates, two destroyers, a nuclear submarine and support vessels.

Commodore Michael Utley, Commander United Kingdom Carrier Strike Group, is reported by Save The Royal Navy here as saying that HMS Queen Elizabeth will be escorted by two Type 45 destroyers, two Type 23 frigates, a nuclear submarine, a Tide-class tanker and RFA Fort Victoria.

The ship will also carry 24 F-35B jets, including US Marine Corps aircraft, in addition to a number of helicopters.

 

Prior to the deployment, it is understood that the Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group will go through a work-up trial off the west Hebrides range sometime in early 2021.

When asked about whether or not the UK has enough escorts to do this without impacting other commitment, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:

“The size and the scale of the escort depends on the deployments and the task that the carrier is involved in. If it is a NATO tasking in the north Atlantic, for example, you would expect an international contribution to those types of taskings, in the same way as we sometimes escort the French carrier or American carriers to make up that.

It is definitely our intention, though, that the carrier strike group will be able to be a wholly UK sovereign deployable group. Now, it is probably not necessary to do that every single time we do it, depending on the tasking, but we want to do that and test doing it. Once we have done that, depending on the deployment, of course, we will cut our cloth as required.”

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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25 COMMENTS

  1. Maybe it might make more sense to concentrate the future naval structure around the two carrier groups and less on Singelton global patroling. The only issue I have with that plan is in our post Brexit existence, we will be under growing pressure to roll into any trade deal some form of defence support? However, monitoring and protecting trade routes from major power abuse, with carrier groups would be exactly the right strategy. Whatever scenario is deployed, more hulls will be required going forward.

      • Some Middle Eastern countries are meaningful, but tend to link some military factors into their deals. However, significant states can also include an element of mutual defence into agreements.

  2. There’s that phrase again, ‘cut our cloth as required’.

    The cynic in me notes that usually means cuts, but I also note that Ben Wallace has used the phrase twice now in the context of our armed forces being too small. So the optimist in me is wondering if we might at least see some small improvement in the situation. Perhaps, Ben Wallace is going to be good for the armed forces?

    It’s only a small flicker of optimism, honest.

    QEC programme is one bright light anyway…

    • I initially had a dim view of the future of our armed forces under another apathetic Tory government but Wallace’s language while speaking under CCR has given me a glimmer of hope. Particularly so when he wrote I think in The Times about how the UK can no longer rely on the US as a steadfast ally and must be able to support itself militarily

      • We’ve had positive language from defence secrataries before but cuts still came. Let’s see increases in the fleet rather than fine words to deceive the public.

      • Problem is that it’s not Wallace who is the problem, same as it wasnt Penny Mordant or Gavin Williamson before.

        The problem is with the Treasury. Is Sajid Javid likely to allocate more money for defence? Sadly I suspect not.

  4. Little help: why does the QE Class sit what appears to be much higher in the water than either the Nimitz or Ford Classes? Is it a simple design choice – e.g. to fit another deck in the hull?

  5. “It is definitely our intention, though, that the carrier strike group will be able to be a wholly UK sovereign deployable group.”

    I would say this is an interesting departure from previous announcements from various figures in the RN, MOD and HMG that repeated the assumption that NATO/allied ships would routinely deploy as part of the UK CSG.

    Blithely relying on our allies to cover our own inadequacies is a recipe for disaster: after all, as the 2nd largest defence spender in NATO and one of the few to meet the 2% target (albeit with a healthy dose of creative accounting along the way), if we can’t afford to deploy ships, what makes us think those countries that are currently not meeting their commitments will be able and willing to deploy ships to support British missions?

    And then there is the fact that some countries are more risk averse than others, and won’t want to put their ships and sailors in harm’s way. This was shown last year when the Spanish pulled one of their ships from the USS Lincoln task force when the latter was redirected to the Gulf during a periodic escalation in tensions with Iran. The USN has the ships in the area to make up the shortfall, but we would very likely struggle to do the same in the similar circumstances, which would mean we might then have to deploy the CSG into a hostile environment without the full complement of escorting vessels.

    We should aim to have the capability of deploying the CSG with a full complement of British units, while at the same time attaching NATO ships from time to time to promote interoperability. But we shouldn’t rely on their ships making up the numbers. T31 will play an important role in this, as those ships will free up the T45s and T23s from global deployments to focus on carrier escort duties and, in the case of the T23s, protecting the missile boats out of Faslane. A second batch of T31s optimised for AAW could also take some of the pressure off the T45s, working as part of the CSG in a point defence role and taking instructions from a T45. Of course, this would involve increasing personnel, which is both difficult and uncosted.

    Likewise, while it is useful to host USMC squadrons to make up the shortfall in our own aircraft numbers in the early stages of our return to fast jet carrier aviation, I would be careful not to become dependent on always having American aircraft and units embarked on our carriers. Ultimately, those American units have their own jobs to do and they may well be needed elsewhere at a crucial moment. And then there is always an issue of command and control, RoE etc. when the CSG is deployed on a uniquely British foreign policy objective, in which the US is not involved, for example the Falklands, Sierra Leone, etc. It’s one thing to have exchange officers on board when deploying to a conflict zone, but whole squadrons are a much larger political matter.

    I feel like we’ve been conditioned over the last 10 years to think that operating a purely British CSG is completely implausible for the UK. However, it shouldn’t be: after all, we were managing to equip and crew our own carrier task groups with 12-20 British owned and operated fast jets on board up until 2010; why should it beyond us now? While the QE class is larger than the Invincibles, we will now only be running 2 carriers, rather than 3, and both the QE class and T45s were designed to be much more efficient in terms of crewing than the ships they have replaced. The tricky part has been getting these complicated and relatively expensive ships built, but now that we have them, the modern RN fleet should be easier to operate and maintain than the fleet of the 1990s (the poor material condition of the T23s notwithstanding).

    • I thought the original plan was to have a Royal Netherlands Navy Air warfare destroyer as part of the escort for the 2021 carrier deployment ?

  6. Short answer: Everybody with knowlage of defence matters knows we’re way short of the escort numbers we need for the commitments we have even before the QEs are considered.
    Plus there’s nothing yet in the pipeline to alter that!

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