Britain’s aircraft carriers, bought but not paid for yet

The Prince of Wales, the newer of the two aircraft carriers costing £3.5bn has broken down in the Solent. I had planned and still plan to write a piece about the 2020-21 Defence Reviews and have already written about it briefly on this blog.  

HMS Prince of Wales R09
HMS Prince of Wales, in Portsmouth, CC Rab Lawrence 2019 BY from flickr

These aircraft carriers, at 64,000 tons are three times bigger than their predecessors which were used to provide air combat capability during the Falklands War. I cannot see a need for such vessels, and it is my view they were authorised to create jobs in the Scottish dockyards that built them albeit under massive US pressure. They are calculated to cost about £3½ bn and the inconvenient truth is they are estimated to have £½m running costs/day!  That makes a fifteen year life time cost of £2.7bn and a full lifetime cost over 50 years of £9.1bn for each aircraft carrier. Over 70% of the whole lifetime cost of the aircraft carriers is running costs and yet to be incurred.

We should sell them, although who would want a ¾ size fleet carrier? Maybe we could sell one each to India and Pakistan, or maybe the Argentines would like one. …

Vulnerable

This popped up in one of my news feeds, it’s at the Daily Mail online site, but interesting and informed. Hastings argues that the two new ‘Fleet’ carriers planned for the Royal Navy, although unfinished are already obsolete.

He argues that they are very expensive and their strike power could be replaced with cruise missiles and drones which require considerably cheaper launch platforms. It is proposed that we buy US F35 warplanes to fly off them which are so expensive, that the numbers to be purchased have been reduced twice. The F35 is multi-role which means that it has an air defence capability but missiles (if you have enough) are good for fleet defence. Hastings also states, that the Navy now only has 17 surface warships all of which would all be needed to defend the carriers at sea which would be very vulnerable to the modern surface to surface anti-ship missiles.

He argues for their cancellation or mothballing, but while the decisions were taken under a Labour Government, the Tories have had seven years to do something about it and inherited responsibility with the publication of the 2010 Strategic Defence Review. …