Britain’s New Carrier Strike Group Growing More Complex with New Frigate and Submarine Joining

The British Royal Navy carrier strike group led by aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth has been joined by the Type 23 Class Frigate HMS Kent and by an unknown nuclear submarine while at sea. The strike group is currently preparing to begin operational deployments which will commence in 2021, and will include two frigates, two Type 45 Class destroyers, two nuclear submarines and various support and replenishment vessels. The carrier itself is expected to deploy 24 F-35B vertical takeoff capable fighters by then, although many of these will be deployed by the U.S. Marine Corps due to insufficient numbers of the costly fighters in British service. The 2021 deployment is expected to see the strike group pass through the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and end in the Pacific. With the Royal Navy suffering from low availability rates  in its destroyer fleet in particular, its ability to provide sufficient escorts for the carrier group has been repeatedly questioned.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace stated in response to concerns regarding the carrier’s escort:

“The size and the scale of the escort depends on the deployments and the task that the carrier is involved in. If it is a NATO tasking in the north Atlantic, for example, you would expect an international contribution to those types of taskings, in the same way as we sometimes escort the French carrier or American carriers to make up that. It is definitely our intention, though, that the carrier strike group will be able to be a wholly UK sovereign deployable group. Now, it is probably not necessary to do that every single time we do it, depending on the tasking, but we want to do that and test doing it. Once we have done that, depending on the deployment, of course, we will cut our cloth as required.”

Given the location were the carrier group will deploy, questions have also been raised regarding the capabilities of British destroyers which have faced serious performance issues when operating in warm waters. Issues regarding an insufficient escort for the carrier group are likely to be further exacerbated when Britain’s second Queen Elizabeth Class carrier the HMS Prince of Wales begins operational deployments. Both carriers were designed to accommodate air wings of 48 F-35B fifth generation single engine fighters, with the British Armed Forces planning to field 138 of the aircraft of which 42 are expected to have been delivered by 2023. The fighter is a specialised variant of the F-35 joint strike fighter designed with a short takeoff and vertical landing capability, and is the only fixed wing aircraft capable of landing on British carriers as they lack the arresting gear needed for conventional landings.