Tomorrow's Navy built for tomorrow's world

It is hard to overestimate the revolution in British military capabilities wrought by the decision (probably, for various reasons, about two years late) to build the two 65,000-ton aircraft carriers Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales. These huge ships are the largest carriers built outside the USA and the biggest warships in the long history of the Royal Navy. They will provide a capability to project real power on a global scale in whatever political framework seems appropriate. Also they will do it in a form that will not necessarily lead to long-term strategic embroilment in unwinnable insurgencies. One of maritime power’s traditional virtues is its ability to limit commitment to the politically acceptable, to take as much or as little of the conflict as one wishes. Indeed the carrier announcement, coming as it did in the first weeks of the Brown administration is an important demonstration of a welcome new strategic focus for British forces, one that is still global but which is more maritime and limited in liability. The lessons of Blair’s mistakes have been learned and the United Kingdom is returning to its strategic roots.

Another key part of the carrier programme is that it is impeccably ‘joint’ in the best sense of the word. Indeed the historic decision to pool the short take off/vertical landing (STOV/L) aircraft of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force in one force was a vital precursor of the future carrier (CVF) programme being the centrepiece of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of 1998. This innovative arrangement had been suggested in the early 1960s by the Royal Navy but turned down by the RAF with disastrous consequences for British overall power projection capabilities. Its adoption took the carrier question, at least to an important extent, out of inter-service squabbling, although the unreconstructed on both sides of the service divide still at times show their displeasure. It meant that the carrier force was part of and not an extra to Britain’s over-all ‘air power’ capabilities. The new ships will be not just ‘dark blue’ assets but a key component of ‘light blue’ strategic mobility and flexibility.

No longer will British aircraft be limited by the availability of concrete and other facilities in unreliable host nations. Sovereign airfields will now be available that could exploit the dominant medium on ‘Earth’s’ surface to be moved and operated around the world at will. The small Invincible class carriers have demonstrated the utility of this capability from the South Atlantic, the Gulf via the Adriatic.

Their success and crucial importance helped make the carrier case in the SDR. It is hard to underestimate the future importance of carrier based aircraft in Britain’s future overall military aviation posture. Out of a front line of 64 ‘offensive support’ aircraft over fifty per cent, 36, will be carrier capable ‘Joint Combat Aircraft’ (JCA).

The actual aircraft that will fulfil the JCA requirement is yet to be chosen Despite various difficulties, the front runner remains the STOV/L variant of the American F-35 Lightning joint strike fighter.

The F-35B, if selected, will be a major enhancement of capability compared to Harrier, being both supersonic and stealthy. It will also restore the air to air capacity lost with Sea Harrier FA2. There is a ‘Plan B’ should F-35B fail and this seems to have been costed and accepted as an option. It is not clear what aircraft this may involve.

The F-35C ‘CV variant’ Lightning has been often mentioned as the preferred choice and the RAF would like this also to replace Tornado. An alternative could be a  marinised ‘Sea Typhoon’ which seems to be under consideration again despite its expense and programme risk. Whatever the choice, the aircraft would require catapults and arrester gear; this has been factored into the design as part of a ‘futureproofing’ process and would not be very expensive.

Whatever the aircraft, there will be, as today, two ‘dark blue’ squadrons normally deployed at sea and two ‘light blue’ squadrons normally deployed ashore although fully capable of carrier deployment as required. A single CVF could carry all thirty six.

Equally, if circumstances require and allow, the ‘dark blue’ squadrons, like their Harrier equipped predecessors today, might well find themselves operating ashore.

The other aircraft component of the overall ‘Carrier Strike’ Programme is a ‘Maritime Airborne Surveillance and Control Aircraft’ (MASC) that will provide general situational awareness and be able to control the carrier’s aircraft. The F-35B option will necessitate a rotary winged solution to this requirement, probably a Merlin successor to the radar equipped Sea King ASaC 7 of today. It is likely that the latter, a highly capable aircraft, will soldier on for some time.  A version of the V-22 tilt rotor is a more distant possibility, although it would have advantages. The best solution would be the latest version of the American E-2 Hawkeye but CVF will not be fitted with ‘cats and traps’ just for this aircraft. The choice of MASC therefore awaits the final choice of Joint Combat Aircraft.     

The CVF programme has been conceptualised, like contemporary British defence policy in general, very much in terms of coalition operations. The most demanding aim of the Carrier Strike programme as a whole is to be able to deliver enough sorties in the initial period of a combined air operation including US forces, so that there is British influence on the plans and actions of the Joint Force Air Component Commander.

The original aim was 150 sorties in the first 24 hours but this has since bee reduced a little. Over 100 sorties, however, is a significant scale of air attack over a range of at least 450 miles from the carrier and all this with stealthy aircraft and the latest precision weapons.

Although the basic planning assumption has been a UK contribution to a US led coalition there are, as stated repeatedly in government statements the possibility of British participation of  operations in a European framework.

It has been fashionable to deride Europe’s defence capacity but this is less sustainable today at the maritime power projection level, at least.  There is in progress a most impressive build up of capability, not least in carriers. France is building a near copy of CVF to supplement her existing ship the problematical nuclear powered Charles De Gaulle.

Italy is commissioning the Conte di Cavour, a little bigger than an ‘Invincible’ and the 28,000 ton Rey Juan Carlos I completing next year is as much a carrier as an amphibious ship. European Union navies have over the last decade commissioned around a dozen new major amphibious ships and more are on the way.

Experience shows that carriers can be rapidly re-roled as amphibious helicopter carriers. The two British CVFs are major enhancements to a European power projection capability that could be used if the politics and scenario were right. A couple of 65,000 ton carriers would be good arguments for British leadership of any such operation.

It must be stressed that the CVF programme has not been justified in a national framework. There has been no attempt to allocate a set number of ‘escorts’ to the two CVFs.  Such would have inflated the programme out of financial sight. Indeed the requirement to safeguard the carrier programme has seen the Royal Navy accept unwelcome reductions in destroyer/frigate (DD/FF) numbers below SDR levels.

Moreover, the latter ships are now thought of as much more than escorts but as combat assets in their own right  Despite all this, however, there are still more than sufficient DD/FF to provide two task group screens (18 ships) and on current plans this should remain the case.

The advent of the two CVFs should allow Britain by 2020 to put together a carrier task group of considerable power with the air defence capacity of the MASC directed Joint Combat Aircraft, supplemented by the Type 45 destroyers, making hostile air activity a highly dangerous affair. This force could strike at long range stealthily and with great accuracy and could cover a landing of at least brigade strength by an accompanying amphibious group.

The anti-submarine escorts and helicopters together with nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs) would make hostile underwater activity equally hazardous while the submarines could join in activities ashore with highly accurate cruise missiles.

It would be hard to deny that such a capability did not make the UK a world power of significance, as one would expect from a country with one of the largest defence budgets in the world.

It is also unlikely on this timescale that anyone but the US could maker a similar effort at a similar range. Observers might well then be looking back at the Brown years as those when the seeds were finally laid for a renaissance of British maritime power and global presence, all the more firmly based because of its acceptable political and human cost and its roots in British strategic tradition.  

Dr Eric Grove, Director, Centre for International Security and War Studies, University of Salford.