Scratch one Royal Navy carrier — sort of
October 26th, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Royal Navy | Posted by Phil Ewing
One of the Royal Navy's planned carriers, scene in this illustration, could lose its capability to carry F-35Bs, the Ministry of Defence said Sunday // Royal Navy
Is it the first step toward the Royal Navy losing its new carriers? Or is it a compromise that will ensure they’ll both be built? Those seem to be the two options after the announcement Sunday that the Royal Navy is willing to delete the capability to handle F-35B Lightning IIs from one of its two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, now just beginning construction. That would mean the Ministry of Defence could buy fewer fighters, saving billions of pounds, but that for all its recent sacrifices, it would only field half the naval air power it originally wanted.
According to The Guardian, this could mean the Royal Navy might have to make even further concessions about its two carriers, including eliminating one or both altogether. And The Times reminds us the carrier change represents “another blow to the [Royal] Navy’s prestige,” after the British government announced not too long ago it was considering deleting one of the fleet’s four Vanguard-class ballistic-missile subs.
Here’s even more context: News broke on Friday that the Joint Strike Fighter could be billions of dollars over-budget and possibly in need of restructuring. So what would fewer jets going to the U.K. do to the rest of the program? Good question.
As it is, the Royal Navy is looking at a situation in which it’s spending a lot to get a ship it effectively didn’t need to build, writes Mike Burleson:
“We can only wonder if an upgraded Ocean class with a strengthened deck would have been less costly and less a burden to build during wartime.”
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The Scoop Deck – Fade out Says:
February 19th, 2010 at 2:37 pm[...] leadership to mortgage much of its fleet against the promise of its two new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. Even Roberts’ final words in the volume are a plea for support for the Royal Navy, and a [...]