HMS Queen Elizabeth- UK Royal Navy Aircraft Carrier | World Defense

HMS Queen Elizabeth- UK Royal Navy Aircraft Carrier

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Queen Elizabeth Commissions Aircraft Carrier with Her Name
Thursday Dec. 07, 2017. (Andrew Matthews/PA via AP)
The Associated Press

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Britain's Queen Elizabeth II walks with the ship's commanding officer Captain Jerry Kyd, rear right,, as she arrives for the commissioning ceremony of Britain's biggest and most powerful warship HMS Queen Elizabeth into the Royal Navy Fleet at Portsmouth Harbour southern England,

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II has attended the commissioning ceremony of Britain's new aircraft carrier, which is named after the monarch.

The 91-year-old queen boarded the Royal Navy's newest, largest and most expensive vessel Thursday in Portsmouth naval base.

The white ensign was raised to mark the moment HMS Queen Elizabeth was officially added to the Royal Navy's fleet.
The queen says the ship "embodies the best of British technology and innovation."

It is still undergoing sea trials and will not be fully operational for several years. It will head to the United States late next year for initial flight trials.

Admiral Philip Jones says that with the new carrier "Britain has confirmed her place among the world's great maritime powers."
The ship cost roughly 3 billion pounds ($4 billion) to build.

https://www.military.com/daily-news...craft-carrier-her-name.html?ESRC=eb_171208.nl
 

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Why are the Queen Elizabeth class carriers so big?

By George Allison
July 21, 2017

The Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers are the largest surface warships ever constructed for the Royal Navy and represent a significant increase in capability.

The vessels will be utilised by all three branches of the UK Armed Forces and will provide eight acres of sovereign territory. Both ships will be versatile enough to be used for operations ranging from high intensity conflict to providing humanitarian aid and disaster relief. The class have increased survivability as a result of the separation and distribution of power generation machinery throughout each ship.

The class has been designed with twin islands which separates the running of the ship from the flying operations resulting in greater visibility of flying operations. Surprisingly for their sheer scale, each ship will only have a total crew of 679, only increasing to the full complement of 1,600 when the air elements are embarked. Why are they so big? Wouldn’t several smaller carriers be more cost effective?

HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Sutherland and HMS Iron Duke.
“The reason that we have arrived at what we have arrived at is because to do the initial strike package, that deep strike package, we have done really quite detailed calculations and we have come out with the figure of 36 joint strike fighters, and that is what has driven the size of it, and that is to be able to deliver the weight of effort that you need for these operations that we are planning in the future. That is the thing that has made us arrive at that size of deck and that size of ship, to enable that to happen.

I have talked with the Chief of Naval Operations in America. He is very keen for us to get these because he sees us slotting in with his carrier groups. For example, in Afghanistan last year they had to call on the French to bail them out with their carrier. He really wants us to have these, but he wants us to have same sort of clout as one of their carriers, which is this figure at 36. He would find that very useful, and really we would mix and match with that.”
— Admiral Sir Alan West, evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, 24 November 2004

What does a large carrier offer that a smaller one doesn’t? Operational experience shows that larger carriers have significant advantages. For example, the Invincible class typically hosted around 12 Sea Harriers and with that their decks were fairly crowded. Tabloids often like to quote 12 as the maximum number of F-35B’s the new Queen Elizabeth class will be able to carry, however this is nonsense.

The term now used for the carriers embarked squadrons is ‘Carrier Air Wing’ (CVW). ‘Tailored Air Group’ (TAG) has been used in the past for tailored rotary air groups and we understand the term has fallen out of use.

The carriers, in peacetime, will usually deploy with around 12-24 F-35B’s and a number of various helicopters. The vessels are capable of deploying a variety of aircraft in large numbers, up to a maximum in the upper fifties in surge conditions.

In addition to the joint force of Royal Air Force and Royal Navy F-35Bs and their pilots, the air wing is expected to be composed of a ‘Maritime Force Protection’ package of nine anti-submarine Merlin HM2 and four or five Merlin for airborne early warning; alternatively a ‘Littoral Manoeuvre’ package could include a mix of RAF Chinooks, Army Apaches, Merlin HC4 and Wildcat HM2.

The Crowsnest AEW&C aircraft will come from the embarked Mk2 Merlins.

We understand that the composition of the CVW is a balance between ship capacity and squadron availability.

The two Queen Elizabeth class carriers can accommodate around twice as many aircraft as the three Invincible class.

This metric isn’t the primary advantage of a larger ship class as each F-35B is considerably larger than a Harrier and has much better performance. There’s very little reason not to build larger carriers, it was once estimated that steel accounted for only about 20 percent of the cost of the ship.

The smaller the carrier, the fewer aircraft it can support and the greater waste of resources it becomes when compared to larger carriers. The smaller the carrier, the more the vessels size restricts the performance of the aircraft onboard. The three Invincible class carriers, which the Queen Elizabeth class will replace, operated small and relatively low performance Sea Harriers. The larger F-35 that will operate from the new carriers is more effective than the Sea Harrier. It carries much more and it flies much faster and much farther. It’s also a more complicated aircraft, requiring more equipment and personnel.

A carrier accommodating as many F-35Bs as the Invincible accommodated Sea Harriers would be far larger by necessity in order to effectively operate the modern, larger aircraft.

The ships former commanding officer, Captain Simon Petitt, rightfully pointed out that there is a lot of symbolism in modern warfare and that having a ship the size of HMS Queen Elizabeth, which will be the navy’s biggest ever, was significant. The sight of a heavily equipped 70,000 tonne carrier, which is almost 300 metres long, heading towards a potential enemy had a deterrent effect that is essential if the UK wants to project influence across the world Petitt claims.

“It is massively visible, you can range back in history and see the value of this. Everything from Nelson deterring Admiral Villeneuve from leaving Cadiz all the way to the big battleships of early 20th century, to what we are doing now.

The Americans use it all the time. We currently haven’t got this level of carrier capability. The bigger the capability the more influence you have to bear.”

So great is the impact of larger vessels as a deterrent, they’re often used as a geopolitical chess piece. American governments have, since the second world war, moved aircraft carriers around to demonstrate American resolve.

The particular benefits of using carriers in this way are that they operate on the high seas, where permission is not needed from other countries. Indeed, since modern US carriers are large and imposing they “show the flag” to great effect due to their sheer size alone. Equally, it is often argued that had the Royal Navy had two full sized carriers in 1982 it is more than possible that Argentina would not have attempted to take the Falklands in the first place.

Larger carriers don’t have to be packed to bursting point with aircraft to achieve their greatest effectiveness, even with fewer aircraft on board, a ship with a large flight deck can rearm and refuel aircraft much more quickly, this is typically why they allow for much higher sortie generation rates than smaller vessels.

The more crowded the flight deck, the slower the turn-around of each aircraft, the lower the sortie generation rate.

Size also offers greater storage capacity, larger vessels do not have to be resupplied as often, impacting both the effectiveness of the carrier and her vulnerability. Because a carrier is more vulnerable when being replenished, the vessel typically withdraws from station for that function. Much of the time lost is the time spent heading away from station and returning. The smaller the carrier, the more time lost and a bigger logistics chain required in support.

HMS Queen Elizabeth seen from frigate HMS Iron Duke
A larger ship is likely to survive damage that will sink or disable a smaller one. The smaller the proportion of a ship that gets damaged, the better the chance that the ship can survive the damage and keep on fighting. It takes sheer size to provide enough protection against all the weapons likely to be used against a carrier, from bombs to cruise missiles to torpedoes.

Thislesson comes from the second world war, where lessons learned from operations with the large converted battlecruisers in comparison with the smaller purpose-built aircraft carriers had taught both the Royal and US Navies that large carriers were more survivable than smaller ones due primarily to the large number of watertight compartments.

If a complement of aircraft that would typically be found on one large carrier is split among several smaller carriers, then each vessel needs its own escorts unless they operate together. This would require more resources to operate effectively. It might be argued that splitting up a carrier force would make it more difficult for an enemy to deal with all of it at once but the price paid in escorting ships would be high, making it unfeasible for most navies. Indeed, the most significant effect this would have would be requiring more smaller carriers to do the job of one large vessel, further increasing costs. Each of the smaller carriers in the group is less survivable, more wasteful and less effective than a single larger ship.

The Queen Elizabeth class mark a change from expressing carrier power in terms of number of aircraft carried, to the number of sortie’s that can be generated from the deck. The class are not the largest class of carrier in the world but they are most likely the smallest and least expensive carrier the Royal Navy could build which still have the advantages that large carriers offer.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/why-are-the-queen-elizabeth-class-carriers-so-big/
 

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qe.jpg

HMS Illustrious (left) sits alongside HMS Queen Elizabeth (right) at Rosyth in 2014, showing the difference in size between the Invincible class and the ships that will replace them

The Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers will be the biggest and most powerful warships ever constructed for the Royal Navy. The first ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth is due to enter service in 2020.

Some key facts about the class by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance.
The ships will be 65,000 tonnes at full displacement - over three times the size of the Invincible Class aircraft carriers.

The length is 280m - 90m longer than the Invisible class aircraft carriers while the width is 70m - twice the Invisible's width.

Each ship has two propellers which together will output some 80MW of power - enough to run 1,000 family cars or 50 high speed trains.

The distribution network on board will manage enough energy to power 300,000 kettles or 5,500 family homes.

Each ship's two propellers will weigh 33 tonnes each - nearly two and half times as heavy as a double decker bus and one and half times as high.

Each of the two huge aircraft lifts can move two Joint Strike Fighters from the hangar to the flight deck in 60 seconds. They're so powerful that together they could lift the entire ship's crew.

Each of the QE Class aircraft carriers can take up to 40 aircraft, both rotary and fixed wing.

There will be a 110MW power station on board each ship - that's enough to provide all of Portsea Island with power.

The anchors will be 3.1m high, each weighing 13 tonnes - almost as much as a double decker bus.

The ships on-board water treatment plant will produce over 500 tonnes of fresh water daily.

http://navalanalyses.blogspot.ae/2014/08/infographics-2-queen-elizabeth-class.html
 

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Britain moves to restore carrier strike capability with warship commissioning
By: Andrew Chuter
08 Dec, 2017
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LONDON ― Britain moved a step closer to restoring its carrier strike capability Thursday when the 65,000-ton aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth was formally commissioned during a ceremony at the Royal Navy base at Portsmouth, southern England.

The warship is set to start helicopter trials in the new year, and later in 2018 it’s scheduled to head for the east coast of the U.S. for initial flight trials with some of the 14 F-35B jets the British have so far purchased from Lockheed Martin.

The largest warship in Europe, the Queen Elizabeth is one of two aircraft carriers built by the BAE Systems-led industry alliance in a program costing about £6.2 billion (U.S. $8.3 billion). The second carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, is structurally complete and is due to be formally handed over to the Royal Navy in 2019.

Only one carrier will be operational at any given time, as Britain doesn’t have the manpower or other resources to simultaneously operate the two warships.


At the commissioning, Adm. Philip Jones, first sea lord and chief of naval staff, said: ”In hoisting the White Ensign from HMS Queen Elizabeth today, Britain has confirmed her place among the world’s great maritime powers in the most majestic and muscular terms.”

“The carriers will sit at the heart of a modernized and emboldened Royal Navy, capable of projecting power and influence at sea, in the air, over the land and in cyberspace, and offering our nation military and political choice in an uncertain world,” he said.

The commissioning of Queen Elizabeth formally restores a carrier strike capability lost by the Royal Navy when a Conservative-led British government axed the Royal Navy’s Invincible-class light carrier fleet in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review.

For several years now, British pilots and naval personnel have been maintaining their skills by operating with their U.S. counterparts. That close association is expected to continue with U.S. Marine Corp F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing jets flying from the deck of the Queen Elizabeth.

The deployment of U.S. Marine F-35s on the Royal Navy warship has in part been triggered by Britain’s inability to fund the acquisition of sufficient aircraft to provide a credible strike force in the years immediately following the introduction into service of the Queen Elizabeth.

The British have so far ordered just 14 F-35Bs, of which all but one has been delivered. The final aircraft of the current batch on order is due to be handed over in the next couple of weeks.

A further batch of aircraft for the British is currently being negotiated with Lockheed Martin, but a Ministry of Defence spokesman in Britain declined to say how many of the jets the country would order in the next lot.

Britain has committed to buying 48 jets for use by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, and the country has said it will eventually order 138 aircraft, although it has been vague regarding an actual timescale.

When the Queen Elizabeth reaches full operational capability toward the back end of the next decade, the British plan to have two squadrons embarked, 24 aircraft in total.

The warship has the ability to handle 36 fighters, although Royal Navy officers have said the carrier could operate with considerably more jets if required.

Government ministers have hinted some of those later jets could be F-35As for the Royal Air Force.

Ever since Britain opted to leave the European Union last year, the weakness of the pound against the dollar has threatened to hit an already overstretched defense budget. There is concern over whether that could have an impact on the F-35 effort — the UK’s second-largest defense program.

One estimate reckons British purchases of U.S. military equipment could eventually account for a quarter of every pound spent on defense procurement.

A defense and security review is also now coming to a close with a battle unfolding between the MoD and the Treasury over whether more cash will be available to stave off potentially crippling defense cuts needed to resolve a budget black hole of up to £20 billion over 10 years.

Some of the cuts expected in the defense review could involve an already under-resourced Royal Navy seeing warship numbers and capabilities further reduced.

The faceoff between the MoD and the Treasury reached a new low earlier this week when a media report in Britain said the chancellor, former Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, who many think is partly to blame for the hole the MoD is now in, would be barred from using Royal Air Force jets for VIP flights until his department paid its bill for previous trips.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2...strike-capability-with-warship-commissioning/
 

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HMS Queen Elizabeth: Leak found on new aircraft carrier

The UK's new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is leaking because of a faulty seal.

The Royal Navy's future flagship, which was commissioned by the Queen earlier this month in Portsmouth, has a problem with one of its propeller shafts.

The fault on the £3.1bn carrier was first identified during sea trials.

A Royal Navy spokesman said the ship is scheduled for repair and the fault does not prevent it from sailing again early in the new year.

According to the Sun newspaper, HMS Queen Elizabeth has been taking on up to 200 litres of sea water every hour because of the fault.

BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale said the problem was "highly embarrassing" for the Royal Navy and was just one of a number of snags still to be rectified.

A Royal Navy spokesman said: "An issue with a shaft seal has been identified during HMS Queen Elizabeth's sea trials; this is scheduled for repair while she is alongside at Portsmouth.

"It does not prevent her from sailing again and her sea trials programme will not be affected."

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Analysis
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Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionThe commissioning ceremony took place on 7 December
By Jonathan Beale, BBC defence correspondent

The Royal Navy is trying to play down the problem, after first trying to hide it.

It is clearly embarrassing.

They have known about the problem for some time but they did not want it to get in the way of the commissioning ceremony in front of the Queen.

The truth is similar leaks in other warships are not unusual and can be fixed relatively easily.

The difference this time though is the scale of HMS Queen Elizabeth and the fact she has just been handed over to the navy.

The big question is whether the leak can be fixed while it is still in the water.

The navy insists the job can be done without her going back to dry dock, which would be costly and add to delays.

Either way, the navy insists the fault will have to be rectified and paid for by the contractors, along with a list of other "snags".

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Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said the cost of the repair would be funded by the contractors that built it.

He added: "This is the reason why we have the sea trials, to make sure that everything is working absolutely perfectly. This is something that work is currently ongoing to deal with."

BAE Systems, which assembled HMS Queen Elizabeth at its dockyard in Fife, said the repair would be done in the new year and take a few days.

The company said: "It is normal practice for a volume of work and defect resolution to continue following vessel acceptance. This will be completed prior to the nation's flagship re-commencing her programme at sea in 2018."

HMS Queen Elizabeth
The Royal Navy's largest ever surface warship
65,000

Tonnes

£3.1bn

Cost

  • 280m Flight deck length
  • 700 Crew currently on board
  • 155,000 miles Length of electrical cable inside the ship
  • 162db Volume of foghorn
Royal Navy

PA

Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a former director of operational capability at the Ministry of Defence, said the headlines were "very embarrassing" but the leak "in reality is no big deal".

"You expect to take some water in when you're operating a warship at sea," he told the BBC.

"It's been out for sea trials, it's been under pressure. They've been testing all their systems to the extremes and I'm afraid to say this is what happens at sea."

The 900ft (280m) long HMS Queen Elizabeth entered its home port of Portsmouth for the first time in August after starting two months of sea trials from Rosyth.

It is the first of the UK's new generation of aircraft carriers.

A second carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, is externally complete but it will take 18 months to fit its internal systems at Rosyth and it will be 2019 before the ship can begin sea trials.

No planes
News of the leak comes after MPs raised concerns over the costs of the F-35 jet aircraft that will fly off HMS Queen Elizabeth.

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Media captionHMS Queen Elizabeth takes to the sea
The UK has begun a £9.1bn programme to buy 48 of the F-35s by 2025 from US giant Lockheed Martin.

But the Commons defence select committee said there has been an "unacceptable lack of transparency" over the jets, with one estimate suggesting each plane will cost more than £150m.


HMS Queen Elizabeth cannot currently deploy planes but the Lightning fighter jets are due to make their first trial flights from the carrier's deck next year, with 120 air crew being trained in the US.

The carrier was built in blocks across six yards around the country - Govan, Scotstoun, Appledore, Cammell Laird in Liverpool, A&P in Newcastle and Portsmouth - before being assembled at Rosyth.

A new national shipbuilding strategy was unveiled by then Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon in September.

The government has said it plans to buy at least five new Type 31e frigates by 2023, and share the work between shipyards across the country.

The first batch of new ships will bolster the Royal Navy fleet, but it is hoped foreign navies will buy ships from the UK in future.

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UK's new £3.1bn aircraft carrier leaking - Financial Times

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MoD admits UK’s £3.1bn aircraft carrier leaks


The biggest and most expensive warship ever commissioned by the UK’s Royal Navy is leaking, the Ministry of Defence has admitted.

Just two weeks after it was officially handed over to the navy in a ceremony attended by the Queen in Portsmouth, it has emerged that the £3.1bn HMS Queen Elizabeth has a stern seal leak around its propellor shaft.

A navy spokesperson said the leak was identified during sea trials, adding that it was scheduled to be repaired “while it is alongside in Portsmouth”. “It does not prevent her from sailing again and her sea trials programme will not be affected,” the navy spokesperson added.
 

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Leak found on Britain's new $4B aircraft carrier 'Queen Elizabeth'
By Susan McFarland
Dec. 19, 2017

A leak was found on Britain's new HMS Queen Elizabeth -- the Royal Navy's largest and most powerful warship ever built, officials said.
The aircraft carrier, commissioned earlier this month at Her Majesty's Naval Base Portsmouth, is worth $4.13 billion.

Military officials said the warship's leak was caused by an issue with a shaft seal and is scheduled for repair.

A Royal Navy spokesman said the issue won't prevent the ship from sailing or its sea trials.

The HMS Queen Elizabeth, which has an estimated service life of 50 years, has been leaking for a while.

Royal Navy Admiral Chris Parry said the leak is "no big deal," and told Sky News that it's normal for every vessel to take on some water.
"That's why you have pumps," he said.


Parry added that the very reason for sea trials is to test the vessel to its extremes and look for faults.
"You get this all the time, you've got very complicated engineering under the water, it's operating obviously at sea and every yachtsman will tell you they take in water somewhere," he said.


The British vessel completed its second stage of trials off the south coast of England earlier this year, and will undergo additional testing in the United States next year.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-...-carrier-Queen-Elizabeth/2851513690948/?nll=1
 

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HMS Queen Elizabeth arrives in Gibraltar on first overseas visit
February 09, 2018

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HMS Queen Elizabeth arriving in Gibraltar. Photo: Royal Navy

Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth pulled into Gibraltar on Friday morning for her first ever overseas port visit.

The visit will be a logistical one for the 65,000-tonne future flagship which left her home in Portsmouth last week for helicopter trials.

These helicopter trials take place before the fixed wing F35 Lightning II trials later this year.

The ship’s crew will, however, test their fitness with “Rock Race”, a 2.7 mile run on a route up to the summit of the iconic Rock of Gibraltar. They will try to crack the current record of 17mins 26 secs set in 1986.

“It is a great privilege for me to be bringing our new aircraft carrier into Gibraltar for her first ever overseas port visit,” Captain Jerry Kyd, the commanding officer of HMS Queen Elizabeth, said.

“Gibraltar is the perfect stop for HMS Queen Elizabeth as we conduct our flying trials in the waters off the Iberian Peninsula. And our visit also underlines the incredibly rich history and special relationship the Royal Navy and Royal Marines share with Gibraltar.”

Since departing the UK for the first time since being commissioned into the Royal Navy, HMS Queen Elizabeth and her ship’s company of 1,000 men and women have been undergoing intensive training.

Under the guidance of the Royal Navy’s Flag Officer Sea Training organisation, all those on board have been honing their skills in dealing with a series of lifelike exercise scenarios including fires, floods, man overboard drills and a simulated crash on deck.

The Commander of British Forces in Gibraltar, Commodore Mike Walliker, said: “Today is a landmark day for Gibraltar and its long-standing and illustrious relationship with the Royal Navy.

“As Commander British Forces I am personally delighted to be able to welcome HMS Queen Elizabeth for her very first visit. It is utterly appropriate and no surprise that the Rock is the first port of call for the ship as she embarks on an exciting journey which has taken her from the builder’s yard to eventually assuming her rightful position at the vanguard of the British fleet.”

The ship was escorted in to Gibraltar by the Royal Navy’s Devonport-based Type 23 frigate HMS Somerset.

Commander Tim Berry, the commanding officer of HMS Somerset, said: “Escorting the largest and most technologically advanced carrier ever built for the Royal Navy past the Rock of Gibraltar is of course a huge privilege.

“Importantly, it also brings about a new focus for my ship that is both challenging and exciting. Carrier Strike will undoubtedly play a key role in supporting Britain’s global narrative well into the second half of this century and for myself and my ship’s company to be part of this vision is inspiring and very rewarding.”

On leaving Gibraltar HMS Queen Elizabeth will return to sea to conduct helicopter trials with specially equipped Merlin and Chinook aircraft from the Aircraft Test and Evaluation Centre at MOD Boscombe Down. The data collected will be analysed to work out their operating parameters at sea, ahead of fixed wing flying trials with the F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter off the east coast of the United States in the summer.


https://navaltoday.com/2018/02/09/h...n-gibraltar-on-first-overseas-visit/?uid=1067
 

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42 Commando launch ‘assault’ from aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth
By George Allison
February 26, 2018

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Royal Marines from 42 Commando have conducted a simulated assault launched from HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Recently sold HMS Ocean could carry up to 690 Embarked Military Forces (EMF) – Royal Marines and Aviation Group personnel – in addition to her ship’s company. HMS Queen Elizabeth can embark up to 900, in addition to their ship’s company, in support of their missions and tasks and a flexible mix of aircraft subject to the operational tasking.

According to the Royal Navy, the troops were processed from their accommodation, through the ship, collecting kit, including weapons and ammunition in a carefully orchestrated process, in through the massive hangar and onto the flight deck to simulate being launched ashore by helicopter.

“The Royal Navy’s amphibious assault capability has to now been provided by assault ships HMS Bulwark and Albion and the Landing Platform Helicopter (LPH), HMS Ocean.

Whilst HMS Queen Elizabeth does not have the surface assault capability with landing craft of the specialist ships, her four-acre flight deck provides plenty of scope from which to project manpower and equipment ashore using the variety of helicopters she will be able to host.”

Having previously served on HMS Ark Royal, the Ship’s Amphibious Operations Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Searight Royal Marines says the training today is as relevant as it ever was:

“We are mirroring exactly what we did in our previous carriers and HMS Ocean; our SOPs are almost identical. But there has been a degree of the Marines having to relearn some of the skills that we took for granted before our most recent land campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Marines are an adaptable force; that’s our USP as the UK’s amphibious forces. So to ask them to spend time at sea is not a surprise or a task too far for any of them. But we’ve taken some time away from conducting major sea campaigns so this sort of training is extremely valuable.”

In order for the ship to demonstrate an initial capability to operate in the Landing Platform Helicopter (LPH) role, it should be able to project Royal Marines and their equipment ashore by aviation, prove ship to shore communications, sustain the troops for the period they are ashore and recover them back to the ship on completion say the Royal Navy.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/42-commando-launch-assault-aircraft-carrier-hms-queen-elizabeth/
 

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Tests of the evacuation chutes - Marine Evacuation System (MES) deployed and tested.

These chutes allow safe, rapid access to life rafts at the bottom
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The Manufacturer:
http://www.lsames.com/mes/defence
 

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Royal Navy Carrier Strike Group Assembles for the First Time
October 6, 2020
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The Royal Navy’s new Carrier Strike Group has assembled for the first time, marking the beginning of a new era of operations. Nine ships, 15 fighter jets, 11 helicopters and 3,000 personnel from the UK, US and the Netherlands are now carrying out exercises in the North Sea.HMS Queen Elizabeth is at the centre of the group which is the start of joint carrier operations between the navy and its NATO allies. The strike group is the largest and most powerful European-led maritime force in almost 20 years. The Carrier Strike Group includes NATO’s most sophisticated destroyers – the Royal Navy’s Type 45s HMS Diamond and HMS Defender and US Navy Arleigh Burke-class USS The Sullivans as well as frigates HMS Northumberland and HMS Kent from the UK and the Dutch Navy’s HNLMS Evertsen.

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Aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth leads a flotilla of destroyers and frigates from the UK, US and the Netherlands, together with two Royal Fleet Auxiliaries

Commodore Steve Moorhouse, Commander UK Carrier Strike Group, said: “The new UK Carrier Strike Group is the embodiment of British maritime power, and sits at the heart of a modernised and emboldened Royal Navy. Protected by a ring of advanced destroyers, frigates, helicopters and submarines, and equipped with fifth generation fighters, HMS Queen Elizabeth is able to strike from the sea at a time and place of our choosing; and with our NATO allies at our side, we will be ready to fight and win in the most demanding circumstances. Carrier Strike offers Britain choice and flexibility on the global stage; it reassures our friends and allies and presents a powerful deterrent to would-be adversaries.”

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The full UK Carrier Strike Group assembled for the first time during Group Exercise 2020 on 4th October.

They will not only protect the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers from enemy ships, submarines, aircraft and missiles, but are also capable of conducting a range of supporting missions, from maritime security to disaster relief. Meanwhile, two Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships, RFA Tideforce and RFA Fort Victoria, will supply fuel, food, spares and ammunition, to enabled sustained operations from the sea without host nation support.HMS Queen Elizabeth and her Strike Group are currently exercising alongside allied nations in the North Sea, as part of NATO’s largest annual exercise, Joint Warrior.

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HMS Queen Elizabeth, RFA Tideforce, HMS Defender and US Navy ship USS The Sullivans.

Commander Vince Owen, Commanding Officer of HMS Defender, said: “Providing air and missile defence to a Carrier Strike Group is exactly the task HMS Defender and the Type 45 has been designed to do. Having previously supported the French aircraft carrier FGS Charles de Gaulle in the fight against ISIL in 2015 and more recently been part of the USS Abraham Lincoln task group as she transited through the Strait of Hormuz last year, it is exciting to be integrating HMS Defender into the UK-led Carrier Strike Group for the first time. Having just successfully completed a period of Basic Operational Sea Training over the summer, the men and women that make up my ship’s company are motivated and ready to take part in the next stage of our training in preparation for deploying with the Carrier Strike Group next year.”
 
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