This is not encouraging:
There are concerns that the new aircraft carrier will not have enough crew trained to operate her, the ordered fighters for her decks are too expensive and weak, the design itself is flawed and that there will not be enough royal navy ships to protect her.
The Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is currently under sea trials and is the largest warship ever built by the Royal Navy. The ship has absorbed £6bn ($7.6bn) worth of investment and has taken around 10 years to come to fruition. The Royal Navy hopes that after a long period of underinvestment these two new supercarriers will bring prestige capability and prowess back to the UK’s naval forces.
Of course, the ships aren't super carriers. Sure they are bigger than anything the British have sailed. But they are medium carriers.
The F-35B should be the least of Britain's problems, I'll say. Unless they are vulnerable to hacking, they are turning out to be good planes despite the long Russian propaganda effort to paint the plane as a waste of money.
But it is true that the 2 ships have soaked up so much money that there seems like there is too little of the rest of the Royal Navy to even escort the ships.
And the marines and army the carriers will support ashore are fading away.
But the design is flawed? Good Lord. Although the article doesn't really make the case for that flaw.
Yes, there is a problem that carriers may be "obsolete." That is sort of true, I think.
For sea control against a naval and air power, large numbers of planes, ships, and subs with long-range missiles and guns fighting networked are the way to go. Carriers really are vulnerable in that environment.
But for power projection to attack targets ashore when the enemy lacks the ability to attack your ships, carriers as big as you can manage are the way to go.
Sadly, the debate over carriers is too often one of apples and oranges with advocates emphasizing the latter ability while critics point to the former, with neither really acknowledging the other part of a carrier's role.
On the bright side, they can sail with the American Navy and fight. So they've got that going for them.
NOTE: I originally wrote F-35C. That was a typo. I do know the difference and know that the British have the B variant (as do the Marines. C is Navy and Air Force is A).
