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HMS Queen Elizabeth will help Britain retake its place among the military elite

A F35 Lightning II aircraft on the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth
A F35 Lightning II aircraft on the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth Credit: Andrew Milligan /PA

The announcement that the first 70,000 tonne Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier is ready to leave the Rosyth shipyard in Scotland marks an important sea-change in the revival of the Royal Navy’s war-fighting capabilities.

At a time when the Navy’s surface fleet has been reduced to the bare minimum, the successful completion of the first stage of the highly complex construction process of Britain’s new aircraft carriers signals the Senior Service is now well on the way to reclaiming its status as one of the world’s pre-eminent naval forces.

The Government’s decision to press ahead with building two new aircraft carriers at an estimated cost of £6.2 billion has been mired in controversy since the outset, with many military experts arguing that they are too big and too costly for the nation’s needs.

Military chiefs from the other Services argue that the cost of the carriers has meant their own forces have been starved of funds.

The carriers - the largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy - certainly represent a mammoth undertaking.

They are three times the size of the three Invincible-class carriers which served with such distinction during the conflicts in the Falklands and Iraq, but were controversially scrapped following the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review when ministers decided the global security context meant the UK could take a break from maintaining its carrier strike capability.

But as events in Libya, Syria and Iraq have demonstrated, this has turned out to be a grave miscalculation, and Britain desperately needs to revive its prowess at operating aircraft carriers at the earliest possible opportunity.

Certainly, when the two new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers become fully operational, Britain will be able to retake its place among the elite group of nations that can boast the ability to project carrier strike operations around the globe.

The first of the carriers, the Queen Elizabeth, which is due - weather permitting - to leave Rosyth dockyard today to begin sea trials , has taken eight years to build and, if all goes to plan, will become fully operational with its fleet of F-35b fighters by 2020.

Once the sea trials have been completed, the ship will then be delivered  towards the end of this year to Portsmouth where a massive new dock is being constructed to accommodate both the Queen Elizabeth and her sister ship, the Prince of Wales, which should be handed over to the Navy in 2019.

The new carrier programme is certainly one of the most ambitious projects undertaken in modern British naval history, on a par with the development of the Navy’s submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent.

And while, with the Government continuing to make cuts to the Navy’s budget, senior naval officers face severe budget difficulties, the arrival of the first carrier will provide an enormous morale boost during what ministers have dubbed “the year of the Navy.”

 

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