The Royal Navy’s Aircraft Carrier Crisis: Why the Queen Elizabeth-Class Falls Short

The Royal Navy’s Aircraft Carrier Crisis: Why the Queen Elizabeth-Class Falls Short

The Royal Navy’s two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers were built to restore Britain’s global carrier strike capability after the retirement of HMS Ark Royal and the Harrier force in 2011. But despite the scale of the project, the United Kingdom may never regularly deploy the kind of large fixed-wing air wings traditionally associated with modern aircraft carriers. Recent operations aboard HMS Prince of Wales have demonstrated that Britain…