New aircraft carrier arrives in Portsmouth with pomp and ceremony – but does it work?
The 65,000-tonne carrier is the largest warship ever to be built in the UK [Image: LPhot Dan Rosenbaum/Royal Navy/PA].
The government’s answer was to wait until the warranties ran out and then buy new engines, costing tens of millions of pounds – because of course austerity doesn’t exist in the world of defence.
Now we have an aircraft carrier costing three times as much as the Type 45 destroyers.
Will it suffer three times as many faults? Let us hope not.
The HMS Queen Elizabeth arrived alongside Portsmouth naval base where the Royal Navy’s newest and biggest ship will be based for its estimated 50-year lifespan.
The 280-metre, 65,000-tonne vessel has been undergoing training and tests at sea after setting out from Rosyth dockyard in Scotland in June.
Those on board and watching from the shore were treated to two separate flypasts of Royal Navy helicopters, the first featuring a Sea King, two MK2 Merlins and two MK3 Merlins, which were then joined by two Hawk jets for the second.
Theresa May hailed the ship as a symbol of the UK as a “great global maritime nation”.
Source: UK’s £3bn aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth arrives in Portsmouth | UK news | The Guardian
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I think the cynical comment on the news was spot on away from the Government PR and pompous words…..we have no defence ships and manpower to defend it, submarines in same situation and some pretty expensive planes yet to be delivered to make it an even slightly effective carrier. Can they afford to even run it properly. And the good news another one is on the way!! Great news
for the ship builders and workers but if you cannot facilitate and work this over budget bit of kit how the hell is another one going to be of any use. Perhaps another state will takeover the unbuilt one and save some much needed dosh.
Well in three years it will get some planes, until then it will have a couple of helicopters, so go and rest peacefully in your bed.
What does the number of planes it has (or helicopters, or whatever) actually have to do with whether it works or not? Nothing.
Part of what it means for an ACC to work, is whether it has AC!
“Theresa May hailed the ship as a symbol of the UK as a “great global maritime nation”.” Now how about some bloody PLANES for it to actually carry?
Who are we going to borrow the aircraft from I wonder.
Aircraft carrier (or just “carrier”, for short, as it won’t get planes until 2021)!
50 years! It’ll be obsolete decades before then! Think of 1995 tech against 1945 tech! May must be deranged!
Isn’t it the highly unreliable US-made F-35 Lightning II jets authorised by Cameron that will populate it’s decks?
The same planes whose systems (when working) are not compatible with the carrier’s glitchy XP operating system?
AND wasn’t it built with a lot of foreign steel?
What could possibly go wrong?
Am I the only one who thinks that producing 2 of these monsters, without planes for years, is a complete waste of money that could have been spent on the 13 much more practical frigates promised to the Clyde in 2014, now reduced to 3. And before anyone says I am only saying this because the Clyde is Scottish, so is Rosyth, which didn’t get much of a mention anywhere.