Leveraging UK Carrier Capability

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The Queen Elizabeth-class carriers offer the UK the opportunity to re-define both what carriers are used for and how they are used, a task which it is essential to complete before they become operational in 2020

With the two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers under construction, the immediate questions facing the current government include whether ultimately to operate both carriers or one and what mix of carrier-strike and expeditionary assets should be included. However, the ongoing discussion around what type of aircraft should be procured in order to fulfil the strike role is obscuring the need for a much broader, and more fundamental, debate about how the new class of carriers might be used.

At 65,000 tons, the Queen Elizabeth class is larger than the UK’s outgoing Invincible-class carriers and also has no equivalent in the US fleet. As such, the UK now has an opportunity to re-define the strategic role of aircraft carriers to meet the challenges that will prevail both in 2020, when the first carrier is to become operational, and in five decades’ time, at the end of the carriers’ expected service.

In this paper, Tobias Ellwood MP argues that while it is impossible to predict the future, it is possible to ensure that the hardware, software and human resources incorporated into these ships have the built-in agility to adapt to evolving techniques, technology and likely tasks. As such, the UK must use the period before the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers become operational to develop their strategic role beyond carrier strike and littoral manoeuvre.



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