The aircraft carrier hatchets have been out again. As we are seeing with tedious regularity these days, someone from the Army or RAF – probably the Army – has been to their media outlet of choice, increasingly the Times lately, and aired a poorly informed criticism of the Royal Navy’s flagships.
This time it’s hard to say whether the “senior defence figure” putting the boot in just doesn’t understand carrier operations or is wilfully misunderstanding them in an attempt to damage the Navy’s image. I’m not sure which is worse. I do know that this sort of interservice tribalism is as clumsy as it is unhelpful.
The Times article in question focusses on two things: an apparent “fear” of this year’s global carrier group deployment transiting the Bab El Mandeb chokepoint, threatened as it is by Houthi missiles and drones, and concern over the carrier group triggering “angry condemnation” from China as it passes through the Indo-Pacific later on. I’ll tackle both.
First, naval planners don’t use “fear’” as a metric. They deal in risk. Each section of the deployment will be analysed and the ships and submarines required to keep the carrier safe allocated per section. Clearly the Eastern Med, the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, South China Sea, and Australian legs will all generate different requirements.
Zooming in on the Bab El Mandeb at the southern end of the Red Sea – the source of all this “fear”, carrying out some actual operations there (as the US carrier Harry S Truman currently is) will generate a very different risk profile to just scooting through as the Italian carrier Cavour and French Charles de Gaulle have lately done. But both those carriers went through before the Houthi ceasefire: why can’t we? Why is anyone suggesting there’s a problem here?
Probably because they don’t like aircraft carriers. The old anti-carrier tropes come out again in the Times: we’re reminded of the sinking of Russian cruiser Moskva by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles in 2022. The threat of drones is mentioned, and the fact that Britain doesn’t have enough F-35B jump jets – our only modern fifth-generation fighters and the only ones which can operate from our catapult-less carriers.
But there’s nothing new here. As even the Times admits, the destroyer HMS Diamond was able to operate perfectly well for an extended period within the Houthi missile footprint last year, shooting down everything that came at her – including a ballistic missile. Our carrier this year will be escorted by such vessels: she won’t be vulnerable as the Moskva turned out to be. Indeed she’ll be considerably less so, as she will have Crowsnest radar helicopters able to detect low-flying drones or unmanned/suicide boats from far away and cue aircraft, ships or weapons onto them. Airborne radar is the medicine for low-flying or surface attackers, as it can see far beyond the horizon of a surface radar.
The aircraft carrier hatchets have been out again. As we are seeing with tedious regularity these days, someone from the Army or RAF – probably the Army – has been to their media outlet of choice, increasingly the Times lately, and aired a poorly informed criticism of the Royal Navy’s flagships.
This time it’s hard to say whether the “senior defence figure” putting the boot in just doesn’t understand carrier operations or is wilfully misunderstanding them in an attempt to damage the Navy’s image. I’m not sure which is worse. I do know that this sort of interservice tribalism is as clumsy as it is unhelpful.
The Times article in question focusses on two things: an apparent “fear” of this year’s global carrier group deployment transiting the Bab El Mandeb chokepoint, threatened as it is by Houthi missiles and drones, and concern over the carrier group triggering “angry condemnation” from China as it passes through the Indo-Pacific later on. I’ll tackle both.
First, naval planners don’t use “fear’” as a metric. They deal in risk. Each section of the deployment will be analysed and the ships and submarines required to keep the carrier safe allocated per section. Clearly the Eastern Med, the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, South China Sea, and Australian legs will all generate different requirements.
Zooming in on the Bab El Mandeb at the southern end of the Red Sea – the source of all this “fear”, carrying out some actual operations there (as the US carrier Harry S Truman currently is) will generate a very different risk profile to just scooting through as the Italian carrier Cavour and French Charles de Gaulle have lately done. But both those carriers went through before the Houthi ceasefire: why can’t we? Why is anyone suggesting there’s a problem here?
Probably because they don’t like aircraft carriers. The old anti-carrier tropes come out again in the Times: we’re reminded of the sinking of Russian cruiser Moskva by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles in 2022. The threat of drones is mentioned, and the fact that Britain doesn’t have enough F-35B jump jets – our only modern fifth-generation fighters and the only ones which can operate from our catapult-less carriers.
But there’s nothing new here. As even the Times admits, the destroyer HMS Diamond was able to operate perfectly well for an extended period within the Houthi missile footprint last year, shooting down everything that came at her – including a ballistic missile. Our carrier this year will be escorted by such vessels: she won’t be vulnerable as the Moskva turned out to be. Indeed she’ll be considerably less so, as she will have Crowsnest radar helicopters able to detect low-flying drones or unmanned/suicide boats from far away and cue aircraft, ships or weapons onto them. Airborne radar is the medicine for low-flying or surface attackers, as it can see far beyond the horizon of a surface radar.