Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier
The Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy consists of two vessels. The lead ship of her class,, was named on 4 July 2014 in honour of Elizabeth I and was commissioned on 7 December 2017. Her sister ship,, was launched on 21 December 2017, and was commissioned on 10 December 2019. They form the central components of the UK Carrier Strike Group.
The contract for the vessels was announced in July 2007, ending several years of delay over cost issues and British naval shipbuilding restructuring. The contracts were signed one year later on 3 July 2008, with the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, a partnership formed with Babcock International, Thales Group, A&P Group, the UK Ministry of Defence and BAE Systems. In 2014 the UK Government announced that the second carrier would be brought into service, ending years of uncertainty surrounding its future. This was confirmed by the Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015, with at least one carrier being available at any time.
The vessels have a full load displacement of an estimated, are long and are the largest warships ever constructed for the Royal Navy. The carrier air wing will vary depending on the type and location of deployment, but will consist of 12-24 F-35Bs under in peacetime and 36 in a conflict scenario and Merlin helicopters to conduct Anti-Submarine Warfare, Airborne Early Warning and utility roles. The projected cost of the programme is £6.2 billion.
The 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review announced the intention to purchase the Lockheed Martin F-35C "carrier variant" and to build Prince of Wales in a Catapult Assisted Take-Off Barrier Arrested Recovery configuration. However, in 2012, after projected costs of the CATOBAR system rose to around twice the original estimate, the government announced that it would revert to the original design deploying F-35Bs from Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing configured carriers.
Background
In May 1997, the newly elected Labour government led by Tony Blair launched the Strategic Defence Review, which re-evaluated every weapon system, then active or in procurement, with the exception of the Eurofighter Typhoon and the ballistic missile submarines. The report, published in July 1998, stated that aircraft carriers offer:- The ability to operate offensive aircraft overseas, when foreign bases may not be available early in a conflict
- All required space and infrastructure, as even where foreign bases are available infrastructure is often lacking
- A coercive and deterrent effect when deployed to a trouble spot
Design studies
Initial Ministry of Defence design studies for what was then the Invincible class replacement were conducted in the mid-1990s. Options considered at this early stage included the possibilities of lengthening the hulls and extending the life of the existing Invincible class ships, converting commercial ships to carriers, and the construction of purpose-built new aircraft carriers.On 25 January 1999, six companies were invited to tender for the assessment phase of the project – Boeing, British Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Marconi Electronic Systems, Raytheon and Thomson-CSF. On 23 November 1999, the MoD awarded detailed assessment studies to two consortia, one led by BAe and one led by Thomson-CSF. The brief required up to six designs from each consortium with air-groups of thirty to forty Future Joint Combat Aircraft. The contracts were split into phases; the first £5.9 million phase was for design assessment which would form part of the aircraft selection, while the second £23.5 million phase involved "risk reduction on the preferred carrier design option".
In 2005 BMT announced it had tested 4 different CVF hull form models and assessed them for propulsion efficiency, maneuverability, seakeeping and noise signatures. It also investigated skeg length, rudder size, transom stern flaps and bulbous bow designs. The basic Delta concept went through many further iterations and development before the design was considered sufficiently mature by late 2006 for detailed cost estimates to be drawn up prior to ordering long-lead items.
Capability requirements and ship size
The vessels, described as "supercarriers" by the media, legislators and sometimes by the Royal Navy, have a full load displacement of an estimated each, over three times the displacement of its predecessor, the. They are the largest warships ever built in the United Kingdom. The last large carriers proposed for the Royal Navy, the CVA-01 programme, were cancelled by the Labour government in the 1966 Defence White Paper. In November 2004 First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Alan West explained that the sortie rate and interoperability with the United States Navy were factors in deciding on the size of the carriers and the composition of the carriers' air-wings:Aircraft and carrier format selection
On 17 January 2001, the UK signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Department of Defense for full participation in the Joint Strike Fighter programme, confirming the JSF as the FJCA. This gave the UK input into aircraft design and the choice between the Lockheed Martin X-35 and Boeing X-32. On 26 October 2001, the DoD announced that Lockheed Martin had won the JSF contract.On 30 September 2002, the MoD announced that the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force would operate the STOVL F-35B variant and that the carriers would take the form of large, conventional carriers, initially adapted for STOVL operations. The carriers, expected to remain in service for fifty years, were designed for but not with catapults and arrestor wires. The carriers were thus planned to be "future proof", allowing them to operate a generation of CATOBAR aircraft beyond the F-35. The contract specified that any conversion would use US C-13 steam catapults and Mark 7 Arresting gear as used by the American carriers. Four months later on 30 January 2003, the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, announced that the Thales Group design had won the competition but that BAE Systems would operate as prime contractor.
The Secretary of State for Defence announced the intention to proceed with the procurement of the carriers in July 2007. The contracts were officially signed one year later on 3 July 2008, after the creation of BVT Surface Fleet through the merger of BAE Systems Surface Fleet Solutions and VT Group's VT Shipbuilding which was a requirement of the UK Government.
Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010
On 19 October 2010, the government announced the results of its Strategic Defence and Security Review. The review stated that only one carrier was certain to be commissioned; the fate of the other was left undecided. The second ship of the class could be placed in "extended readiness" to provide a continuous single carrier strike capability when the other was in refit or provide the option to regenerate more quickly to a two carrier strike ability. Alternatively, the second ship could be sold in "cooperation with a close ally to provide continuous carrier-strike capability".It was also announced that the operational carrier would have catapult and arrestor gear installed to accommodate the carrier variant of the F-35 rather than the short-take off and vertical-landing version. It was decided to use the next-generation Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System catapult and Advanced Arresting Gear instead of the more conventional systems which the design had originally been specified to be compatible with.
The decision to convert Prince of Wales to CATOBAR was reviewed after the projected costs rose to around double the original estimate. On 10 May 2012, the Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, announced in Parliament that the government had decided to revert to its predecessor's plans to purchase the F-35B rather than the F-35C, and to complete both aircraft carriers with ski-jumps in the STOVL configuration. MoD sources indicated that the cost of installing EMALS and AAG on Prince of Wales would have risen to £2 billion, of which about £450 million of which was the cost of the equipment and the remainder the cost of installation. The total cost of the work that had been done on the conversion to a CATOBAR configuration, and of reverting the design to the original STOVL configuration, was estimated by Philip Hammond to be "something in the order of £100 million". In later testimony before a parliamentary committee, Bernard Gray, Chief of Defence Materiel, revealed that even though the carriers had been sold as adaptable and easy to convert for CATOBAR, no serious effort had been made in this direction since 2002.