Artist's impression of the Future Carrier [Picture: MOD]

The ordering of HMS Queen Elizabeth, and HMS Prince of Wales is linked to the establishment of BVT Surface Fleet on 1 July - a joint venture combining the shipyards and associated facilities owned by BAE Systems and VT Group.  Hopefully this new company will be greater than the sum of its parts rather than less - combining the export sales recently enjoyed by VT Shipbuilding with the undoubted industrial capability of BAE Systems Surface Fleet Solutions.  I was once worryingly told by a manager at shipyard acquired by BAE Systems that the new owners had no interest in chasing export contracts under a billion pounds, only Ministry of Defence contracts had the value and profit margins needed to gain the attention of senior management.   BVT - led by Chief Executive Alan Johnston - has to be motivated to do the leg work needed to compete with French, Spanish, German and French shipyards for the sub-£1 billion contracts that are the bread and butter of the warship export market, or its decline after the CVF project is a certain.

The official start of construction of the first CVF, HMS Queen Elizabeth, seems to have become something of a race.  In April the talk was of January 2009, but Babcock Marine then started hinting that it may be this year, next Appledore (who will build most of the bow superblock for Babcock) mentioned October, and Babcock is now apparently scheduling a ceremony on 4 August.  If the published five and half year manufacture schedule still holds true, it's possible that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will be cutting the commissioning cake of HMS Queen Elizabeth on some wintry day in Portsmouth in early 2014.

Since December 2005 there has been official French interest in using the CVF design as the basis for a second aircraft carrier for their navy - commonly referred to as PA2.  In 2006 and early 2007 the rapid construction of PA2 seemed almost certain and the French pressed the UK to agree to a fully collaborative aircraft carrier project, suggesting that sharing the manufacture of the three carriers would result in potential savings of £80 million a ship for the financially stretched MOD.  The officials in the MOD and Royal Navy who rebuffed these overtures perhaps deserve congratulation in the light of France's recent deferral of a decision on the construction of PA2 until 2011-12.  France is now expected to revisit the nuclear propulsion option for PA2 (something perhaps dismissed too cursorily for CVF) and the final design may well have more features in common with the US Navy's latest CV-21 Gerald R Ford-class of aircraft carriers than CVF. 

At a cost of £2 billion each, the Royal Navy's two new aircraft carriers will be very expensive capital ships and their construction without adequate provision for their air group's is a rather ludicrous situation - building aircraft carriers without embarked aircraft is rather like building hospitals with no doctors. 

Originally the Future Aircraft Carrier, the Future Carrier Borne Aircraft (FCBA) and the Future Organic Airborne Early Warning Aircraft (FOAEW) were lock-stepped towards a simultaneous 2012 in service date - but that sensible approach has been long been dropped.  Old hands watching the current ITV2 series Warship featuring HMS Illustrious will have struggled to reconcile the frequent references to her "strike carrier" role with a flight deck and hanger empty of all but a few Merlin helicopters.  She does actually briefly embark four Harrier GR.7's of the squadron size (nine Harrier GR.7 or GR.9 aircraft) Naval Strike Wing, but that's hardly a daunting force to most possible enemies of the UK. 

When HMS Queen Elizabeth enters service in 2014 - or perhaps more realistically 2015 or 2016 - it can only be hoped that the similar number and type of aircraft likely to be initially dispersed over her vastly larger bulk doesn't quickly result in many 'white elephant' (grey elephant?) media stories, particularly when compared to her ambitious mission statements such as to be "a coercive presence that can promote conflict prevention through deterrence".

Maybe the RAF (including the Naval Strike Wing) will indeed eventually own enough operational F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to fill a CVF to its capacity (36 JSF's plus 4 helicopters), but if that actually happens only once every ten years the bean counters will have an obvious target when more economies are being demanded now.  If and when the two new carriers are completed - will they have then served their political purpose and be candidates for early retirement, like so many other Royal Navy warships in recent decades?

The emphasis on the new aircraft carriers has also led to a worrying neglect by the Royal Navy - at least in public - of its need for other capabilities.  In recent years independent groups (e.g. the UK National Defence Association) and union led efforts (e.g. Keep Our Future Afloat Campaign - KOFAC) seem to have been more vocal and possibly more successful than the Royal Navy in justifying why the UK has to retain strong and broadly based maritime military capabilities.

Depressingly the combination of urgent operational demands in Afghanistan and Iraq, a hopelessly inadequate defence budget and the preservation of CVF seems to have made the Royal Navy proportionally the biggest loser in Planning Round 08.  The latest equipment cuts include two Type 45 destroyers, the class will now number just six. 

It's perhaps worth comparing the new fleet being promised to the Royal Navy by the Labour government in 1998/9 with the actual current situation:

The Royal Navy had 35 escorts in service (aka commissioned frigates and destroyers) in 1998 and SDR promised a long term strength of 32.  The Royal Navy currently has an actual strength of 24 (including two Type 32 destroyers with their Sea Dart missile system non-operational) and by 2018 it will have at best 19 escorts in service - 6 new Type 45 destroyers and 13 aging Type 23 frigates.  By comparison, the RN averaged nearly 70 destroyers and frigates in service during the 1970's - many of these were smaller than their modern counterparts, but three small ships can be in two more places than one large ship.

A sheer lack of numbers now cripples the Royal Navy's.  In the future the top priority when allocating very scare operational escorts will inevitably be escorting the ready carrier and the amphibious task group; other deployments will have to be rationed to requirements deemed in extremis worthy of a short term surge effort.