The Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers entered service for the United Kingdom in 2019. They were supposed to usher in a new era of British naval aviation.
The carriers were also billed as a showcase of innovation, and they would be operating a version of the jointly developed F-35 fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
From their debut, these carriers were plagued with mechanical failures and design flaws. The problems came one after another from the moment the ships were commissioned and have kept one of the ships, the HMS Prince of Wales, in dock for repairs for 33 percent of the time it has been in service.
Embarrassingly, it has spent less time at sea—about 21 percent—than the time it has been down for repairs.
Some of the more significant issues that have kept these ships out of service include:
-In August 2022, problems related to the HMS Prince of Wales’ starboard propeller shaft truncated the vessel’s planned Atlantic crossing. The carrier was supposed to participate in exercises off the U.S. eastern seaboard.
-In November 2021, a Royal Navy-operated F-35B crashed into the Mediterranean after taking off from the HMS Queen Elizabeth. A recovery effort was immediately launched to make sure the technology did not fall into Russian hands. (Moscow maintains a sizeable naval presence in the region.)
-Following an investigation, it was learned the UK F-35B had ingested a cover that protects the engine air intake from debris while the aircraft is inactive and parked on deck. That cover had inexplicably not been removed prior to take-off.
-In February 2024, routine pre-sailing checks identified an issue with a coupling on the Queen Elizabeth’s starboard propeller shaft. While at the time this seemed to be a defect related to a similar fault discovered with its sister ship, it was later determined that the two mishaps were in no way related. They resulted from separate defects.
-In October 2020, the Prince of Wales sustained major flooding in its engine room following a burst pipe. This caused significant damage to the ship’s electrical switchboards.
Queen Elizabeth-Class: Are These One-Off or Systemic Design Flaws
It is fair to say that the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers have encountered difficulties since entering service. The problems have left the carriers inactive for periods of several months, and sometimes years.
It is also fair to ask whether these carriers are contributing to NATO defense the way they are supposed to. As one commentator pointed out in October 2024, the lack of a UK carrier to relieve the USS Gerald R Ford and its carrier strike group once they departed from the Mediterranean region earlier that year created gaps in capability that could be fatal in wartime.
The U.S. carrier was deployed following the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in October 2023. Given the problems with its carriers, the Royal Navy suggested using land-based aircraft at its bases in Cyprus, or calling on the air forces of allied Arab nations to lend a hand.
The criticisms of what increasingly appear to be flawed carrier designs repeatedly highlight the fact that a key reason for building the British carriers was their ability to slot into U.S. Navy deployments when they are needed.
That is a bargain they have failed to deliver on, and those who raise questions about the reliability of the UK carriers are right to wonder whether one could ever stand in for the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea.
Whether or not the design problems can ever be fixed, the fact remains that the two carriers were costly and suffered considerable cost overruns; they cost almost double the original $4.4 billion estimate.
That figure does not include the cost for acquiring the F-35 aircraft in their air wing. The fighters cost $100 million per unit, and a the carriers need to board at least 26.
It may reach the point where the carriers are just not able to carry the load for the joint operations they were procured to support. If that is the case, the price paid becomes hard to justify.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
