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It was interesting today to hear the news that due to cash constraints, the two super sized aircraft carriers were going to be delayed or to be exact, their build programmes extended so that they enter service two years later. The HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, were due to come into service in 2014 and 2016, as the biggest and most powerful warships the UK has ever built.

Now there is an issue here and has been for some time, these are supposed to fly the new Joint Strike Fighter being developed in the US which are not likely to be available until 2014 at the earliest and, there are continuing doubts about the VTOL version anyway which leads me to think…

Better Off Cancelling the Whole Project

The reality is that if there did not have to be a General Election in 18 months time with the majority of the shipbuilding work is going to Yards in Scottish Labour held constituencies, the project would have been cancelled. The decision to continue building these two white elephants is political rather than military.

We really do need to get our thinking sorted out over things such as these, with the vastly reduced Navy due to the usual Labour Party reluctance to spend on Defence, we need to forget phrases like “Force Projection” and concentrate on “Defence in Depth” as our strategic goal which means simply, to be able to sustain combat losses, replace them but in the interim, keep fighting.

Clearly given the cost to maintain these two ‘assets’, we will have insufficient other Naval ships to form a Carrier Battle Group. The sad truth is that these two ships will only ever be able to put to sea attached to an American Fleet, because without surface and submarine escorts plus the logistical support for two conventionally powered ships, they would be sitting ducks otherwise.

The Military Reality

To me the key problem lies in the mindset of flying piloted fast jets where the development costs have become ridiculous because the human body cannot deal with the same ‘G-Forces’ that the aircraft can.In war losing the aircraft in combat of through accident would be bad but losing the aircrew would be a total disaster.

Historic lessons need to be relearned. Towards the end of the Second World War and despite all the problems, the German aircraft industry was turning out ever more advanced planes, the problem was that they had no crew to fly them. A modern fast jet pilot probably takes 3-4 years to train, they are highly valuable assets and in a sudden war, the losses would be irreplaceable.

The Thinking is Wrong

Yes there will be manned flight still but mainly via helicopters, all major air/sea engagements will involve missiles not “Biggles doing Dog Fights”. In this context the aircraft is just a launch platform for missiles and its speed capability is largely irrelevant, its relative position and airborne stamina is all that matters.

As a Country and a member of NATO, we would do far better to build far smaller launch and recovery ships (platforms) for UAV (Unmanned Ariel Vehicles) like the Predator, call them small aircraft carriers if you like. Instead of two vast carriers, build 10 UAV + helicopter ships it would probably cost no more and would give the UK amazing flexible strike capability.

The Benefits

The sheer persistence on patrol of UAVs – 24/7/365, the fact the ‘pilots’ need not even be on the ships or that ship based ‘pilots’ can work with remote ‘crews’ is by itself an amazing potential plus the cost at around £5 million per copy for a UAV as opposed to £150 million a copy for a piloted craft means two key things:

We bring a flexible and additional force potential to NATO plus in war, we can sustain losses of both ships and UAVs. Just like all ships carry helicopters, there is no reason why all future RN ships shouldn’t carry a number of UAVs if only for “eyes and self defence”, it potential extends the scope for any vessel to have anti-air and anti-ship weapons in the air, away from the mother ship and ready to fire on command .

It should also be recalled that by using converted ships of various kinds, the Royal Navy ended WWII with between 60-80 carriers but, not necessarily all conventional in construction. It is unlikely that there will be ever again a “Battle of Midway”, hot engagements against an equally sophisticated and armed enemy will be missile based exchanges. If we are going to have to fight, let’s fight to win and equip ourselves accordingly which means we start by changing our thinking first.