What is the point of the UK Carrier Strike Group?

We have recently been told that the United (for now) Kingdom's newest aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be sailing to the South China Sea at the head of her carrier strike group. There she will engage in what the Americans call freedom of navigation operations, or to put it in terms that might have been used by former UK defence secretary and tarantula enthusiast Gavin Williamson, telling China to shut up and go away.

This will be the first big foreign outing of the new UK carrier, the largest ship ever built in the British Isles. The ship alone cost some £3 billion, not including the staggeringly expensive and troubled F-35 aircraft it operates. But what are they getting for their money? Does the carrier strike group represent a meaningful power projection capability for Britain, and if not, what is the point of the whole thing?

I used to get money for writing this kind of thing, but these days all I have is this blog and the occasional desire to indulge myself. So here goes.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

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If you think about carrier air operations, you'll probably think of the US Navy. The USN has commanded the oceans of the world pretty much since the battle of Midway, and a single United States carrier strike group has more surface combat power than most navies, and operates an air wing bigger than most national air forces. No other country can deploy fighting power like this, but then again, many nations with air forces smaller than a US carrier air wing can provide their citizens with education and basic health care, so obviously there are some tradeoffs.

When the Royal Navy started the Queen Elizabeth -class project in the 1990s, the goal was obviously not to replicate their former colony's task forces. But an independent carrier strike capacity would hardly have seemed like an impossible pipe dream, since the Falklands War was barely a decade old.

In 1982, Britain responded to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands by sending a naval task force to retake the islands. Built around the STOVL carriers HMS Hermes and Invincible, the task force consisted of two LPDs, eight destroyers and fifteen frigates, as well as submarines, support ships and auxiliaries, totalling 127 ships, including 62 merchant ships taken into service. In terms of surface combatants, the entire Royal Navy of 2021 is smaller than the Falklands task force, with a total strength of six destroyers and thirteen frigates.

In the South Atlantic, the UK task force faced a navy that never attempted any serious operations against it, and a decrepit air force equipped almost entirely with 1950s aircraft and lacking any meaningful aerial refueling capacity to facilitate long-range attacks on the Royal Navy. With the enemy navy effectively absent, the task force could optimize its defenses against anti-ship missiles and air attacks with cannon and unguided bombs; the highly capable Sea Harrier force operating from the carriers was a huge asset.

Despite these severe drawbacks, the Argentinian air force fought their antiquated equipment with exceptional skill and élan, and inflicted considerable casualties on the UK force. Two destroyers, HMS Sheffield and Coventry, were sunk, and HMS Glasgow was disabled by a bomb that failed to explode. Two County-class destroyers, HMS Antrim and Glamorgan, were also heavily damaged by air attack. So against an obsolete air force and no surface or submarine threat, the task force lost three out of eight destroyers, and two frigates were also sunk. Transposed to today's Royal Navy, these would be crippling losses. Even at the time, they threatened the success of the whole operation.

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Carrier Strike Group 21, as it is called, sailed for China led by, obviously, HMS Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by two Type 45 air-defence destroyers and two Type 23 anti-submarine frigates. They are joined by a destroyer and frigate from NATO allies, because sending three UK destroyers would have meant dispatching fully half of the Royal Navy's destroyers to Asia, so two destroyers and two, perhaps three, frigates are pretty much the maximum for an operation like this.

This is not a force that has any real staying power on independent operations. No doubt, the Sea Viper SAM system on the Type 45s is very capable, although there are always risks involved in relying on a single system; in the Falklands, the Sea Wolf point-defence missile system twice crashed under attack, leading to the loss of HMS Coventry. In the case of the Carrier Strike Group, one fluke incident like this would easily be enough to damage, even disable, one of the carrier escorts. 

And that's just the air threat. When we think about the rumored abilities of Swedish diesel-electric submarines to sink a US supercarrier, and the expectation that the technology will continue to spread around the world, how sanguine can anyone be about the anti-submarine capabilities of the carrier group? Again, the group is so tiny that a single torpedo hit can do huge damage. Or indeed one anti-ship missile getting through. Then consider this tiny force facing several simultaneous threats, or an asymmetric attack like the kamikaze speedboat that disabled the USS Cole. 

If even one escort is severely damaged, can the carrier group continue to operate? Let alone if one of them is sunk. Two destroyers and two frigates means no redundancy, and even in the case of a damaged ship, would it be sent off on its own to seek repairs, or would the entire force have to withdraw? And yet the Royal Navy can't realistically field a larger force. The Falklands experience should have driven home that naval operations against an enemy with severe deficiencies, able to present only a limited, one-dimensional threat, will result in casualties. And yet the Royal Navy is fielding a carrier strike group that can't sustain any.

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Frankly, the idea that the new fleet carriers provide the UK with an independent global striking capacity is ludicrous. The Royal Navy doesn't have the ships to deploy a carrier group that can face any real opposition without neglecting not only its duties to NATO, but also the defence of the British isles. For that defence, the carriers are next to useless. Without a capable escort, the UK carrier group is as vulnerable in the Far East as the previous HMS Prince of Wales, sunk by Japanese air attack in 1941, was.

For operations other than war, like humanitarian assistance or evacuations and suchlike, an amphibious assault ship or a light carrier like the retired Invincible class would be far more capable than a fleet carrier. Such ships could also have operated the Sea Harrier, a very capable combat aircraft that proved itself beyond doubt in the Falklands and was since modernized to carry the AIM-120 AMRAAM missile for a full BVR air combat capability; much better value for money than the F-35. I have a vague memory that the Finnish air force at one time evaluated the Harrier, but apparently they didn't appreciate its qualities since it never made it onto their fighter short-list. I don't know why that was.

So what can the carriers actually do? Literally the only thing they are good for is participating in the US's Forever War. Both of the Queen Elizabeths can take the place of a US fleet carrier in their rotation of supercarriers; with US sea and air control, the minimal escort the Royal Navy can provide will be more than sufficient, and even though the UK carriers have considerably less striking power, they can take some of the strain off the already chronically overstretched US Navy. The point of the much-heralded Asian cruise is purely to demonstrate that Britain would be a loyal ally in any US-led confrontation with China.

The carriers even compare unfavorably with Trident. The UK has an independent submarine-based nuclear deterrent; although they rely on the US for servicing the missiles, the operation of the weapons is completely in British hands. Whether the nuclear deterrent provided by Trident is worth having, especially at considerable cost, is a question for the British tax-payer. But you can make a case for Trident providing the UK with an actual independent capability - especially if you remember what it's actually for. The carriers, on the other hand, produce nothing even as useful as Trident.

One argument that's been put forward for Trident is that being a nuclear power guarantees Britain "a seat at the top table" in international politics. Whether that's worth the massive expense is a whole other question, but in essence, this is also what the carriers are for: they provide a capacity for Britain to contribute to US power projection. Presumably this will come with the same advantages that accrued to the United Kingdom from their participation in the US forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - whatever those advantages are. This need to appease the USians is, of course, made all the more urgent by Brexit.

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So what is the point of the UK Carrier Strike Group, then? There isn't one. It's a colossally expensive, pointless exercise in flag-waving and playing at being a world power. If the UK actually wanted a credible independent power projection capability, it would require heavy investment in a much larger navy and naval air force. Instead they play at being Americans.

The UK fleet carriers represent a shameless waste of money in pursuit of an appearance of world power. A naval Brexit, really.