HMS Prince of Wales was officially named today during a ceremony in Rosyth, Scotland. The ship’s sponsor, Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Rothesay, followed Royal Navy tradition by triggering the release of a bottle of 10-year-old whiskey to smash against the ship’s hull. It’s been a busy summer for the RN. In August HMS Queen Elizabeth arrived in Portsmouth for the first time. Less than a month later it is time to mark another major milestone for the aircraft carrier programme.
HMS PoW was structurally complete in July 2016 but the complex work of fitting out and systems integration is still in its early stages. The ship will be floated out of dry dock in early 2018 and be berthed in the same position where HMS Queen Elizabeth was completed. HMS QE was in effect a prototype vessel so progress on the second ship is already ahead of schedule which has been built around 20% faster, thanks to the lessons learned. This includes improvement to the application of its heat-resistant flight deck Thermal Metalic Spray (TMS) paint and installing an improved F-35 landing light systems earlier in the build process. There have also been adjustments to construction practice. To save time coming on and off the ship, contractors now use the ship itself as their offices, using the hangar and other large available spaces to hold meetings and keep stocks of materials. Although it is described as “an aggressive timeline” there is confidence HMS PoW will go to sea in the Summer of 2019, building on the success of HMS QE’s initial trials.
HMS Prince of Wales – lead ship for the assault role
HMS PoW is having some internal modifications so she can perform in the LPH (assault ship / littoral maneuver) role. These modifications are modest and include changes to some access routes, accommodation and storage arrangements for the embarked military force and their kit. She will be able to comfortably accommodate 2 companies of Marines (around 500 men) and it is intended she will declare full LPH operating capability sometime in 2023. The 4.5 acre flight deck will allow HMS PoW to simultaneously launch up to 14 helicopters in a single wave. Although using these ships in the LPH role far from ideal, this space gives them a great advantage over HMS Ocean. HMS QE will be modified like her sister during her first major refit, probably in 2026, so both ships will then have full LPH capability.
The QEC are not designed to carry amphibious landing craft. They will carry 3 passenger transport boats (PTBs) lowered down from bays on the sponsons on 4 deck. The PTBs are intended for ferrying crew and visitors to and from the ship when anchored offshore and are not intended for use in the assault role. Four PTBs have been ordered from Alnmaritec for HMS QE, two named Swordfish and Buccaneer have been already been delivered. HMS PoW will instead receive three workboats of the SEA class, part of the recent order for 30 workboats placed with Atlas Elektronik.
Continous carrier capability
It is now clear the RN is aiming to maintain continuous carrier capability. Initially, manpower concerns had made this seem unlikely but manning the carriers has been prioritised, even at the expense of the rest of the fleet. The intention is that one aircraft carrier will be at 5 days notice to deploy (Very High Readiness). When configured for the LPH role they will be expected to be at 30 days notice to deploy (High Readiness). Theoretically, it may be possible for both carriers to be deployed together, with one in strike role and one in LPH role. Maintenance periods and refits will obviously mean that for long periods only one carrier will be available.
The future for HMS Queen Elizabeth
HMS Queen Elizabeth should sail for the second phase of her sea trials in October and will formally commission in December. She will sail for heavy weather trials in the North Atlantic in the first quarter of 2018. During this time she will also focus on rotary-wing certification and trials with embarked Wildcats, Merlin Mk2s, Merlin HC4s, Army Air Corps Apache and RAF Chinooks. HMS QE will not be fully capable in the LPH role for several years but she will routinely embark Royal Marines of the Special Purpose Task Group. The SPTG was established in December 2015, its prime role is to rescue downed aircrew and destroy or recover sensitive equipment such as F-35 parts. However, the SPTG is a multi-purpose formation that can be used to support other special forces operations or conduct raids ashore.
HMS QE will be back alongside for a further planned “defect rectification and capability insertion” period in mid-2018. The main work will be adding equipment to support F-35 operations such as the Instrument Carrier Landing System (ICLS) and set up ALIS – the F-35 aircraft maintenance system. In the later part of 2018 HMS QE will sail with HMS Montrose as her escort to the East Coast of the US. She will embark Royal Marines who will be flown ashore to exercise with the US Marine Corps. Off the Eastern Seaboard of the US, the first F-35Bs will land on HMS QE to begin flying trials. Two specially instrumented “orange-wired” F-35B test aircraft and four pilots will be aboard for 8 weeks of trials and evaluation. Short Rolling Vertical Landing (SRVL) will be practiced for the first time outside a simulator. This complex manoeuvre will allow the aircraft to return safely to the ship with a weight of unused weapons or fuel. The technique is controversial, many F-35 naysayers expect it to prove unworkable.
As something we can all look forward to, respected film-maker Chris Terrill has been embarked aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth during her sea trials and his 3-part documentary Royal Navy: Carrier Strike will be shown on BBC 2 in January 2018.
A carrier without an adequate escort of properly equipped and manned ships is pointless. If I fixates that these carriers were built for symbolic deployments and political grandstanding pretending we are still a ‘great power’.
Ah, the spirit of spirit of Lord Haw Haw is alive and well.
Anyone would think we have one of the largest economies in the world, host the world’s premier financial centre, hold a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, poses arguably the largest navy in Europe, have global cultural, financial and defence alliances and interests, give away £15b a year in aid, have a government that spends £772b+ per annum, are one of a handful of countries with the skills and infrastructure to design and build carriers, plus nuclear subs and complex warships, and are a nuclear power with a permanent at sea deterrence.
Oh hang on a minute that’s right isn’t it?
Next people will be claiming we have always had aircraft carriers since their creation and that we scrapped three light carriers to build two heavy ones.
Oh hang on another minute that is right as well isn’t it?
Still never mind, we always have endless people like you to deride all our (many) achievements and bring us all down to earth, thanks very much, otherwise we might be in danger of regaining our national pride and self respect.
I’m with silent
I’m DEFINITELY with silent – Jeremy.. sorry Iqbal, has been spouting his nonsense on a number of threads lately, about time he gave up as a lost cause. Don’t know about the other services, but his derogatory and insulting attitude to the Navy is becoming particularly tiresome.
And no one to crew them
Right wing cabal striking back.
Bitching and moaning on every discussion about lack of escort ships on top of the carriers and nuclear subs they want the taxpayer to cough up for. Now that’s ‘nonsense’ because its coming from someone else.
Our armed forces are a bit like an insurance policy – you hope you never need it, but when you do, invariably you wish you’d spent more and got better cover! Yes, many of the suggestions on this site are pipe dreams, but a relatively small increase in spending, coupled with a concerted recruitment drive would make a massive difference to capability. A balanced fleet is all that is required, the carriers being its focus. No one would realistically expect a Royal Navy big enough to fight a war against Russia or China unaided, but a Falklands’ style conflict to protect our national interests should be within our capabilituy if required and the deterrent effect of a carrier task force could prevent war and save lives. Not nonsense, common sense!
There is no pretence. If you deploy the military equipment of a great power then militarily, you are one. I don’t think that anyone would deny that Russia is a military great power, despite having an economy quite a bit smaller than that of the UK. How you act is who you are.
Britain is an affluent, medium sized country, that has been managing economic and geopolitical decline since WW2, at a time of a rising Asia. This decline will accelerate with withdrawal from the EU, which was our only way of having influence anything like on a par with the US or China.
The decline of the UK can be seen by both the covetousness over trinkets like Trident (even NK has nukes and Israel has subs with nukes but nobody calls them a great power) and carriers (even India has a carrier and they can’t provide toilets for half their people). The loss of the financial services industry and loss of access to the EU market will be the final nail in our economic coffin because we don’t make stuff anymore like the Germans. This whole Brexit nonsense is just the last spasms of Imperial hubris.
Britain is moving away from foreign interventions, given the abysmal outcomes of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan and the electorate is more worried about domestic travails like funding public services and cost of living. This is why all these articles asking for ‘just a little more’ money for new ships and weapons is so inappropriate in a ‘great power’ where we have food banks aplenty, old people dying from the cold as they can’t afford heating, massive social inequality (second worst in the OECD) where you have to go to £30,000 a year public schools to get a good job and where the armed forces deliberately recruit young people from poor working class backgrounds in economically deprived areas because most people no longer value military service as in previous generations. The officer corps are of course from a different social demographic.
There isn’t anything wrong with decline in geopolitical terms. You love your country for what it is, not what some people pretend it to be. This is still the country that invented the English language, NHS and the BBC. We still have a certain moral clout in the world when it comes to human rights and parliamentary governance.
I never went to public, but have a good job, as do all of my siblings. Higher education is no guarantee of a job, and there are not droves of elderly people dying from cold. As for food banks, I saw an interview with a woman claiming food, holding a smartphone (Samsung I think) in one hand and a cigarette in the other, so where we’re her priorities? Most of the people on this site just want to see our country properly defended in a dangerous world. Strong defence is a deterrent to aggression, as Russia and China and even India’ which all have massive social issues, seem to realise. If you want to extol about social injustices, fine, but this is a Defence forum, you’re barking up the wrong tree!
Iqbal…..you put forward an argument from your point of view, but when you find a public school for £30000 let me know…..they cost more than that!
I don’t recognise the country you talk about, this post reads like an undergraduate social studies essay.
We have a massive economy and the private education sector is tiny, so this argument is baseless and a gross insult to anyone who ever got of their backside to take responsibility for themselves and their families. Employers do not give a toss what your background is, or what your accent is, they care about you have done and what you are capable of.
Military service has lost a lot of the respect of previous generations, true, but this is due to political incompetence, the ever present threat of cuts or unpreparedness, the degenerative nature of the benefits system – but – it is mainly due to people like you who deride anything other than victim hood, making self-reliance or serving one’s country appear some kind of redundant anachronism, perpetually spreading the falsehood that we are weak and the people are weak.
As for the EU, every member state within has a strong ‘out’ movement, and every member state’s media tells its audience they are the only one that feels that way and everyone else loves it. Many member states have refused to pay into the EU as the EU is 200 billion Euro in behind in payments to member states. The EU is bankrupt, introverted, and responsible for the cultural and economic decline of its members. Europe is the only continent on earth, to have consistently declined economically.
We don’t make anything, yeah right, HMG spends almost £800b a year, but we don’t make anything. In 2015, the United Kingdom exported $425B. In 2015 the GDP of the United Kingdom was $2.86T and its GDP per capita was $41.8k. The top exports of the United Kingdom are Cars ($40.8B), Packaged Medicaments ($19.9B), Gas Turbines ($14.7B) and Refined Petroleum ($13.2B), but the list is endless. Anyone of these sectors is exporting more than the entire GDP of many countries.
As for social inequality, we create this ourselves largely due to the failure to control our borders (and the pervasive benefits system), illegal immigration is a tragedy of epic proportions, where large amounts of unknown people live in the shadows, often under the control of criminals away from the protections of the state. We have problems of slavery, sex slavery, witchcraft, human sacrifice, vagrancy, crime, people smuggling, generational racial and religious intolerance, as we are importing all the problems of the third world.
Food banks, what do you expect? They are giving away FREE food of course they are busy. I think the supermarkets would be a lot busier if everyone apart from shop lifters didn’t pay for anything.
As for the world stage, the BBC and the NHS are irrelevant, our multitude of partners require economic and cultural engagement, and defence engagement and assistance to help them develop, maintain, prosper and in many cases survive. The military, in particular the RN, is the primary diplomatic tool for the UK to do this and export our higher standards. We need friends, but friends who refuse to help their friends are no friends at all and go begging when they need something. If tell the world we are not prepared to defend our interests and those of our allies, then we will lose those interestsm, and war, death and economic devastation will result.
I will say no more now apart from this: government spending is dependent on the economy (including the NHS) is dependent on the economy, the economy is dependent on international trade, international trade is dependent on international security, international security is dependent on the MILITARY.
Please stop running down the UK, these self-hating attitudes are destroying the spirit and ambition of so many, before they have even started.
I look at this site to see how the RN is doing in serving us all, not to hear your pervasive, externalised self-hatred.
I look forward to reading the posts of knowledgeable people instead.
Good show, and well said! I can add nothing to that!
Good news Prince of Wales has been named, there has been reports that the Prince of Wales is heavier than the Queen Elizabeth, if this is the case why?
I’m, definitely not a lefty, but in your desire for greatness you’ve built an empty shell. The armed forces are spending beyond our means. The carrier project is basically below the critical mass required, even if you think fleet carriers are a good idea these days. It’s not 6.2 billion, that’s the cost of the big steel boxes (and there’s plenty more to spend on modifications like the Ocean semi replacement bodge) it’s more like 10 times that amount. We don’t seem to have enough crew for the existing ships. Here again the enthusiasts are quoting 600 compliment, it’s much nearer 700 just to run the ship and that’s about half the full crew required to do anything. I believe that you need at least 3 times that again when you include training and leave etc. STRN and it’s contributors are the first to claim that RN ships are under equipped and all those PFI schemes will have to be paid for in the future just like some dodgy and extortionate Ocean finance home consolidation loan. I have yet to hear of a convincing application for the carriers, usually it just that it will impress our stupid enemies who won’t be able to see them for what they are.
There will be times none will be available nevermind 2. The RN is completely out of balance, as Admiral West always said it would be when he stated that ordering the carriers would force the acquisition of more escorts.
Its more correct to say the armed forces are under funded. There have been no reductions in threats, quite the opposite. More submarines in the world than ever before, more nuclear armed counties than in 1995, Russia is resurgent, and Imperial China is back. Argentina might not be able to take the Falklands, but they have been promised help from other South American nations. In 2003 the RN had 12 SSNs, today 6, in 2003,24 destroyers and frigates, today 17, and so on. Why give aid to two nuclear powers both with bigger army and air forces than the UK?
For the experts, does anyone know whether in an emergency or special tactical situation, an F35B would be capable of landing and making a short distance hop from a Chinnock capable escort flight deck
This was done by the harriers from cruiser flight decks. I imagine that the F35B would make a big mess.
Great ships for the RN .
Will be good to seem them operating together.
What if your aircraft lifts were designed to go all the way down to water level.
Vehicles stowed on deck or in the hangar could be lowered to water level then transferred to mexflote and hence transferred ashore.
I’ve often wondered about that as well. There must be a good reason why not. How about a deployable pontoon complete with a big scissor lift to bridge the gap. May be it would take up too much space on the hanger deck. Perhaps weight issues could be dealt with by using composites. Possibly an expanding catamaran or inflatable elements.