A significant though little-noticed announcement from Britains ministry of defence (MoD) in February 2005 signalled a further step in a project that could radically alter the countrys defence posture, making it easier for a future government to be heavily involved in major operations overseas alongside the United States.
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The MoD statement confirmed that a US company, Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, had been chosen to be the physical integrator to coordinate the construction of the largest aircraft carriers ever to be fielded by the Royal Navy. It is a programme that marks a major change in naval deployments and, in one sense, marks the attempt to return to the days when Britains self-perception was of a great power.
Over the next decade, Britains three existing aircraft carriers the 20,000-ton Invincible-class warships carriers are to be replaced by two 60,000-ton future aircraft (CVF ) carriers that will deploy the US-built F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing advanced strike aircraft. The carriers are to be built by an unusual and already problematic consortium of BAE Systems and the French company, Thales, with KBR brought in to ensure that whole project works.
The two new carriers will be substantially larger than the fleet carriers that Britain deployed in the 1950s and 1960s including even HMS Eagle, which was in its day the Royal Navys largest-ever warship. This represents an important shift in the naval posture that has held since such warships were withdrawn in the 1970s, when they were replaced by the much smaller but more versatile Invincible class.
The first, F35B-deploying CVF is due to enter service in 2012 and the second in 2015; the cost of the two ships is assessed at about £3 billion. But there are problems on several fronts, with slippage in all key areas of the project. Almost two years have already been lost even in these early stages; although 2012 is still being given as the initial deployment date, this now appears fanciful. Few independent analysts believe that the £3 billion figure is remotely realistic. Furthermore, the F35B has experienced major problems of excess weight and is substantially behind schedule. This delay is now so serious that it is highly unlikely that the advanced strike aircraft will even be available when the first of the new carriers is completed.
In anticipation, an alternative deployment plan is likely to see the latest version of the Harrier jump jet, the GR9, used on the new carriers in their initial phase of operation. But existing versions of the Harrier have many inadequacies, one being that the engine is not sufficiently powerful for hot-weather operations something of a problem when operating in the Mediterranean or the Persian Gulf. In addition to requiring various other upgrades, the GR9 will have an improved Rolls Royce Pegasus 107 engine to overcome this problem.
The considerable delays and massive cost overruns affecting the CVF carriers programme make it the latest in a series of delayed and hugely expensive defence projects. If recent aircraft experience is a guide, the F35B will be late and enormously wasteful perhaps not as disastrous as the extraordinary, costly folly of persisting with the cold war-era Eurofighter, but not far behind it.
Future war, future peace
These problems are at root not just financial and technical but strategic. They relate to the core purpose and logic of Britains defence policy priorities over the next thirty and more years.
What the whole CVF programme is about is having very large warships that can play a realistic part in operations such as the Iraq war. It will offer Britain a modest piece of any future action that would be otherwise completely dominated by the United States. The smallness is guaranteed: although the CVF programme will have a preponderate role in the navys surface fleet, refitting work means that only one of its two ships will routinely be available at any one time. But so is the ambition: the project is designed to maintain a future expeditionary capability at the centre of Britains defence plans.
In the late 1980s, as the cold war was ending, there were powerful arguments for cancelling the multinational Eurofighter programme. None of the governments involved had the political courage to do so; the result has been a host of technical problems, colossal waste of resources and an aircraft that might be relevant to the pre-1989 era but is frankly a real embarrassment now.
The implication is that there is a strong argument for cancelling both elements of the project, and reconsidering whether Britain should put a future expeditionary capability at the core of its defence strategy for the next generation. The most appropriate time for a rethink might be after the general election expected in May 2005, yet it is probable that whichever political party wins it will not have the courage to scrap the new carrier project and go for something more appropriate. If the CVF does survive the next year, the programme is likely to drag on, consuming resources to the point where it will be too expensive to cancel.
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What could replace it? Instead of two large CVF, there is a strong case for the Invincible class to be succeeded by three carriers of broadly similar size, initially using the Harrier GR9 and, later, further developments of the airframe. The Royal Navy already has two 19,500-ton amphibious support ships, HMS Albion (now in service) and HMS Bulwark (due to be commissioned in mid-2005). It also has another warship, the 21,500-ton HMS Ocean, described as an assault ship but which is actually based on the hull design of the Invincible-class carriers and can itself deploy up to eighteen helicopters.
If the CVF project does eventually materialise, it would give Britain a naval strike capability that it currently lacks. But, even leaving aside issues of delays and cost, the counter-argument over its utility is that it will be unnecessary and irrelevant in terms of the kinds of operations that Britain is likely to be, and should be, committed to in the coming decades.
Instead of the CVF, Britain would benefit far more from deploying a fleet of more compact and versatile surface ships, including Bulwark, Albion and Ocean. These are more likely to be readily available for the wide range of missions likely to be needed in the next generation, including peace-support operations and humanitarian relief.
