After lengthy delays, the British government has signed contracts for the construction of two large aircraft carriers-the largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy. Given the designation
CVF for aircraft carrier-future during their development, the new carriers will displace some 64,000 (long) tons full load compared to approximately 100,000 tons for the latest nuclear-propelled carriers of the U.S. Navy's Nimitz (CVN-68) class. The aircraft carriers will enable the Royal Navy to remain a major political-military force despite the recent reductions in the Navy's ships, aircraft, and submarines.1
The ships, to be named Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, are scheduled for completion in 2014 and 2016, respectively. BAE Systems is the prime contractor. The ships will operate conventional aircraft, which will make arrested landings and launch with a ski-ramp (rather than by catapults, as in U.S. carriers).
The carriers will replace three small "Harrier carriers" of the Invincible class, ships displacing 19,500-tons full load, that were completed in the early 1980s. Those ships operated Harrier-type vertical/short takeoff and landing (VSTOL) aircraft and helicopters. Despite her small size and being able to only operate VSTOL aircraft, the Invincible and the slightly larger VSTOL carrier Hermes were key players in the British victory against Argentina in the 1982 Falklands conflict. (The Hermes has since been transferred to the Indian Navy.)
The CVF design is unusual in having dual starboard-side island structures with two starboard, deck-edge elevators connecting the hangar and flight decks. The design is based on supporting 500 aircraft sorties over five days, consuming some 800 metric tons of ordnance.
The ships will have gas turbine engines driving electric motors providing a maximum speed of 25 knots (compared to 30-plus knots for U.S. nuclear carriers). The manning goal is some 600, with as many as 800 in embarked squadrons and command staff, i.e., a total of about 1,400 men and women. They are expected to operate the STOVL configuration of the U.S.-developed F-35 Lightning II that is planned for the U.S. Marine Corps and the Royal Navy.
(The French Navy is planning to build a CVF variant. That ship has a scheduled completion goal of 2015, when the one existing French carrier, the nuclear-propelled Charles de Gaulle, is scheduled for a refueling and major overhaul. It is unlikely that the French can meet that deadline.)
U.S. Navy officials have generally ignored the British carrier situation. One retired flag officer denigrated the British effort, saying that the Royal Navy would rather have a Nimitz-class CVN than a CVF, and that the U.S. Navy had nothing to learn from the British carrier effort.2 But the unusual CVF design should warrant American attention, for possible incorporation of some features in future U.S. large-deck carriers and the LHA/LHD large-deck amphibious ships. Indeed, the list of carrier aviation lessons taught by the Royal Navy is long and highly significant.
To start, the world's first warship completed with facilities to launch wheeled aircraft was HMS Furious, a light battle cruiser completed in 1917. That ship, in various carrier configurations, served through World War II. Subsequently, the British developed the angled flight deck, which made high-performance jet aircraft operation possible from carriers; the mirror landing system and its derivatives; steam catapults; and, of course, the widely used, very successful Harrier.3 Several other highly innovative features were developed and evaluated by the British, but for various reasons were not adopted, among them the flexible flight deck (for wheel-less aircraft) and the water-spray arresting gear.
The "flex-deck" concept was tested ashore in Britain and the United States (Naval Air Test Center Patuxent River), and at sea in HMS Warrior. A significant weight savings could be had by deleting the undercarriage from carrier aircraft. Although technically feasible, the scheme would have forced such aircraft to land only on specially configured carriers and airfields ashore.
The water-spray arresting gear used seawater instead of the normal arresting-gear motors aboard carriers. A unique feature of the device-intended for British carriers that were planned for the 1960s-was its ability to halt aircraft regardless of their weight and landing speed in the same run-out distance. This would greatly simplify and speed up carrier landing operations. Also, the water-spray arresting gear would be about one-third the weight and one-half the cost of contemporary arresting equipment.
Several British operational developments have also impacted on carrier aviation, among them the first use of air-dropped torpedoes in combat (in the Aegean Sea in 1915), and the first use of helicopters for vertical assault in combat operations (at Suez in 1956).
Thus, the Royal Navy's carrier efforts have been at the forefront of technological developments in the field. While the U.S. Navy has refined and improved on many of these efforts, current and future British approaches to putting aviation to sea should be considered in the context of possible American benefit from them.
1. See VADM Sir Jeremy Blackham, RN (Retired), and Gwyn Prins, "Storm Waters for the Royal Navy," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (October 2007), pp. 20-25.
2. VADM Robert Dunn, USN (Retired), comments at the Lexington Institute's conference on the future of aircraft carriers, Arlington, VA, 26 July 2007.
3. Harrier variants are flown by the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, Indian Navy, Italian Navy, Spanish Navy, and U.S. Marine Corps.