The U.K. Royal Navy has assembled its largest carrier strike group in almost 40 years, the
service announced.
Commodore Steve Moorhouse, commander of the U.K. Carrier Strike Group said in a statement,
“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,”
He added.
“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,”
The Queen Elizabeth strike group includes 2 destroyers - HMS Diamond (D34) & HMS Defender
(D36), 2 frigates - HMS Northumberland (F238) & HMS Kent (F78), and 2 auxiliary vessels
- RFA Tideforce (A139) & RFA Fort Victoria (A387)
In this video Defense Updates analyzes why the Queen Elizabeth strike group will be a
potent adversary for Russia & China?
Let’s get started.
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The Queen Elizabeth class is a class of two aircraft carriers of the United Kingdom's
Royal Navy.
HMS Queen Elizabeth, the lead ship of this class has been commissioned in 2017.
The second, HMS Prince of Wales, is scheduled for commissioning in 2020.
Each will displace 65,000 tons and has a length of 280 m.
They will carry around 1,600 personnel on board.
They are the largest warships ever constructed for the Royal Navy, and the second-largest
non-US Navy warships after the Yamato-class battleships.
The cost of the program is £6.2 billion.
The engine configuration of Queen Elizabeth-class is as follows
2 × Rolls-Royce Marine Trent MT30, 36 MW (48,000 hp) gas turbine engine
4 × Wärtsilä 38, 11.6 MW (15,600 hp) marine diesel engines
It has a speed of about 26 knots or 48 km/h and a range of 10,000 nautical miles or 18,520
km.
The ship's radars include BAE Systems and Thales S1850M for long-range wide-area search,
the BAE Systems Artisan 3D Type 997 maritime medium-range active electronically scanned
array radar, and navigation radar.
BAE claims the S1850M has fully automatic detection and track initiation that can track
up to 1,000 air targets at a range of around 400 km or 250 mi
For self-defense, it has Phalanx CIWS, 30-mm DS30M Mk2 guns and miniguns.
HMS Queen Elizabeth will generally carry 24 F-35B fighters, as well as 14 Merlin anti-submarine
and utility helicopters.
But in wartime, the carrier could carry up to 36 fighters.
HMS Queen Elizabeth will have Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II as its main strike aircraft.
The F-35 is a family of single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth multirole fighters.
The fifth-generation combat aircraft is designed to perform ground attack and air superiority
missions.
The F-35B which is a short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) variant, is the first to combine
radar-evading stealth technology with supersonic speeds and the ability to work with carriers.
British F-35Bs will be armed with several weapons like Meteor, ASRAAM, Paveway IV, SPEAR
3 to name a few.
Meteor missile is currently considered to be the most potent Beyond Visual Range Air
to Air missile.
The main differentiator of Meteor is its range.
With 150 km or around 93 miles range, it provides an ultra-long-range interception ability against
fighter-sized targets critical in attaining 'First look-First-Shoot-First-Kill' capability.
HMS Diamond (D34) & HMS Defender (D36) are Type 45 destroyers.
The Type 45 destroyers are 152.4 m (500 ft 0 in) in length, with a beam of 21.2 m, a
draught of 7.4 m, and a displacement of approximately 8,500 tonnes.
This makes them significantly larger than the Type 42 they replace.
The Type 45 destroyers are primarily designed for anti-air warfare with the capability to
defend against targets such as fighter aircraft and drones as well as highly maneuverable
sea-skimming anti-ship missiles traveling at supersonic speeds.
The Royal Navy describes the destroyers' mission as being "to shield the Fleet from air attack”
The Type 45 destroyer is equipped with the Sea Viper (PAAMS) air-defense system utilizing
the SAMPSON active electronically scanned array multi-function radar and the S1850M
long-range radar.
PAAMS is able to track over 2,000 targets and simultaneously control and coordinate
multiple missiles in the air at once, allowing a large number of tracks to be intercepted
and destroyed at any given time.
This makes it particularly difficult to swamp PAAMS during a saturation attack, even if
the attacking elements are supersonic.
A core component of PAAMS is the Aster missile, comprising Aster 15 and Aster 30.
MBDA describes Aster as a "hit-to-kill" anti-missile missile capable of intercepting all types
of high-performance air threats at a maximum range of 120 km or about 75 miles.
In addition to its anti-air warfare role, PAAMS offers additional ballistic missile
defense capabilities.
Nick Brown, the editor-in-chief of Jane's International Defence Review, was quoted by
The Huffington Post (a US online news aggregator and blog) saying, "It's [Type 45 destroyer]
certainly one of the most advanced air defense ships in the world...
The US Aegis system is similar, but Sea Viper is more advanced.”
HMS Northumberland (F238), HMS Kent (F78) are Type 23 frigate.
The Type 23 frigate or Duke class is a class of frigates built for the United Kingdom's
Royal Navy.
they form the core of the Royal Navy's destroyer and frigate fleet and serve alongside the
Type 45 destroyers.
Initially, Type 23 was intended to be a light anti-submarine frigate to counter Soviet nuclear
submarines operating in the North Atlantic.
As a result of lessons learned from the Falklands War, the design grew in size and complexity
to encompass the Vertical Launch (VLS) Sea Wolf system with an extra tracking system
as a defense against low-flying aircraft and sea-skimming anti-ship missiles such as Exocet.
With the addition of Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles and a medium caliber gun for naval
gunfire support, Type 23 has evolved into a more complex and balanced vessel optimized
for general warfare, which introduced a host of new technologies and concepts to the Royal
Navy.
RFA Tideforce & RFA Fort Victoria are Tide-class replenishment tanker of the British Royal
Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Tide-class has tanks for diesel oil, aviation
fuel (19.000m3), and freshwater (1,400m3).
HMS Queen Elizabeth is a modern carrier and its capabilities are surpassed only by American
Nimitz and Ford-class supercarriers.
Though the carrier is not nuclear powered, it still has enough range to project power
far away from the British homeland.
In a speech to the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London last year, Gavin Williamson
who was the Defence Secretary at that time had said the HMS Queen Elizabeth would also
make appearances in the Mediterranean and the Middle East apart from the Asia Pacific.
Williamson had added,
"The UK is a global power with truly global interest ... we must be prepared to compete
for our interests and our values far, far from home,”
The Ministry of Defence has been urged by several British politicians to send HMS Queen
Elizabeth to the South China Sea to stand up to China.
All these indicate that the Queen Elizabeth strike group will likely play a much more
proactive role and with its excellent capabilities, it will be a major headache for Russia and China.