ABOARD HMS PRINCE OF WALES, IN THE ATLANTIC—The flight deck of Britain’s second aircraft carrier of the Queen Elizabeth class is now scorched from the burn marks left by the vertical landings made by U.S. F-35B Lightnings, the very type of planes that will one day, in their dozens, become the air wing of what Britain hopes will be a second punch to its strike force.
The jets and pilots from VX-23, the U.S. Navy’s premier test flight squadron at nearby Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, have spent a month making more than 115 landings of every variety to put the new carrier through its paces. They have landed in wet weather. They have landed facing backward. They have even eschewed the vertical landing ability altogether and rolled to a stop—a nifty trick if you want to land with a full underbelly of expensive armaments. The carrier also tested a Mojave drone, a 3-ton, 56-foot beast that can stay aloft all day and can carry four Hellfire missiles.
Britain’s navy may be diminished. Post-Brexit, its ambitions are not. With a couple of carriers, a handful of frigates and nuclear-powered subs (both attack and ballistic), and the odd patrol boat, Britain wants to be a player—if not in Europe, then on the far side of the world. Even relatively new superpowers must concede that aircraft carriers are the calling card of a serious blue-water navy, valued as much for their prestige or symbolism as for their ability to project force over great distance. There was a time when the young and smallish U.S. Navy came to the assistance of the Royal Navy; now it is the other way around.
Prince of Wales is spending more than three months on the east coast of the United States, testing a dozen types of aircraft, including three unmanned drones. What doesn’t need so much testing is the breadth and depth of the special relationship that links these two navies. “Westlant 23,” as this deployment is dubbed, is less an operation than a chance for highly professional allies to spend quality time together, including exchanges, training, and technology sharing. Some U.S. pilots and instructors have been re-qualified for carrier landings on the U.K. flattop. Unusually, the British ship is home-ported at Norfolk for the duration.
Prince of Wales is getting worked up in the Atlantic, as its sister ship did. But all eyes are on a far-off, different set of seas. Post-Brexit Britain—itself an enormous aircraft carrier—is slowly being turned in the direction of Asia. Britain may be later than others to both the strategy and the nomenclature, but “Indo-Pacific” was bandied about in conversations with everyone from the carrier’s commanding officer down to a 17-year-old junior rate. It’s indicative of a concrete shift in British foreign policy, the so-called tilt toward Asia, and the behind-the-scenes strength of U.S. influence and persuasion.
For years, Britain had steered away from hawkish American views, wanting to keep a steady flow of Chinese tourist and university student dollars coming into the country, along with other investments. Almost a decade ago, Britain’s then-prime minister, David Cameron, proclaimed a “golden era” in China-U.K. ties. In 2022, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s first major foreign-policy speech said that era was over and that Beijing posed a “systemic challenge to our values and interests.” Awkwardly, Britain’s new foreign secretary is that same David Cameron.
Britain is still not where the United States is on defending Taiwan (though, to be fair, often the Biden White House is not where the United States is on Taiwan), but the U.K. is coming around. Britain’s 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defense, Development, and Foreign Policy, refreshed in 2023, highlighted Britain’s economic, diplomatic, and security partnerships and presence in the Indo-Pacific. Some of the big items are a nuclear sub deal, known as AUKUS, inked between the U.K., the United States, and Australia, and the forward deployment of some surface ships to the region. To date, the British naval presence in the region is limited to a couple of patrol vessels showing the flag more than teeth.
The British government keeps touting its tilt to the Pacific and its resumption of a “Global Britain” security stance, even though most of the defense commitments so far are small scale. Last month, Parliament essentially said that Britain needed to go big or go home when it comes to defense in the Indo-Pacific. But Britain is not alone.
There is a prologue here: In the mid-1930s, U.S. Navy planners were faced with an insoluble problem in the Pacific. Japan, now unfettered by treaty limits on shipbuilding, threatened to surpass the U.S. Navy’s ability to defend American interests in the Far East. Unless, planners concluded, an informal deal with Britain to share the burden could tilt the balance once again. Today, Beijing is outbuilding the American navy and again threatening to push it out of the Western Pacific; so allied and friendly navies are cleaving together like in old times, in clear opposition to China.
For instance: While aboard Prince of Wales, a lot of time and more than 200 landings were spent integrating the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor into the British carrier’s flight operations. They spotted it on different parts of the flight deck. They practiced folding its wings, fitting it in the hangar below, and explored whether Royal Navy crew members could maintain it. The fastidiousness with which these trials were being undertaken was not for a photo-op: The Royal Navy does not operate its own Ospreys.
Prince of Wales is one of two newish big-deck aircraft carriers operated by the British, alongside Queen Elizabeth, the largest ships ever built for the Royal Navy, which the U.K. deploys in carrier strike groups. To American eyes, they aren’t fleet carriers at all, like the multibillion-dollar Gerald R. Ford class, but more like big-deck amphibious ships. They have ski lifts, not fancy catapults. Their F-35Bs are the vertical takeoff-and-landing type, not the conventional tail hook F-35Cs that are starting to populate U.S. carrier air wings. Reinforcing the similarity with U.S. amphibious ships, Prince of Wales is also equipped to land ashore Royal Marines or British Army troops from its own troop-carrying helicopters.
But a flattop by any name would smell just as sweet for a U.S. Navy that could use all the flight decks it can get in the sprawling Indo-Pacific region. Its own carrier force is overworked and under-serviced after delays to get the Ford into commission, with new amphibious ships arriving slowly and an overall U.S. fleet that will shrink before it starts to grow again.
Meanwhile, China can count on three aircraft carriers in its fleet, with one other on the way—at least. And China’s carriers are getting better: They started out with ski jumps, not unlike Eddie the Eagle, and are now onto custom-built proper ships, vessels approaching the size of the Gerald Ford, with catapults and arrestor wires—and with proper planes, too, and deadly ones at that. And China has allies. Recently, the Chinese and Russian navies have conducted a number of joint exercises, including near Alaska and around Japan.
It’s not hard to see how Prince of Wales helps fix the math. And that applies as well to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, which is busy converting a pair of helicopter carriers, Izumo and Kaga, into actual aircraft carriers (the first Japan has built since World War II) capable of operating the F-35B.
Pentagon and Indo-Pacific planners are looking at the new British carrier, and its cohorts, as something that can be trained up to become a valuable cross-deck asset. It’s hard to view Westlant 23 as anything but “AUKUS for carriers.” Prince of Wales will become the U.K.’s on-call strike carrier in 2024, take on its own air group, including F-35Bs, and deploy to the Indo-Pacific in 2025.
To U.S. eyes, it may all be far from the 6,000-ship U.S. Navy that finished World War II, or the 600-ship navy that finished the Cold War. But Britain’s navy turned to Japan for help in the early 1900s covering the Pacific when it was under strain; Americans stepped in to help Britain in World War I, and they helped each other in the second. It is time, it seems, to get the band back together again.