Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and her crews practice airborne missions

Cmdr. Nathan Gray RN, Makes the first ever F-35B Lightning II jet take off from HMS Queen Elizabeth. Royal Navy Photo

HMS Queen Elizabeth and her F-35B jets have been training for any and all eventualities related to carrier strike operations.

F-35 jets launched from HMS Queen Elizabeth practised air combat, dogfighting against Typhoons and other F-35A.

HMS Queen Elizabeth and her aircraft were recently joined by frigate HMS Kent and a nuclear submarine while on Exercise Crimson Ocean.

Exercise Crimson Ocean is geared towards putting the carrier and her F-35s through their paces onboard HMS Queen Elizabeth.

The exercise is part of a journey to enable the carrier, her aircraft and her escorts to deploy operationally next year. Next year, HMS Queen Elizabeth will deploy with two frigates, two destroyers, a nuclear submarine and support vessels.

Commodore Michael Utley, Commander United Kingdom Carrier Strike Group, is reported by Save The Royal Navy here as saying that HMS Queen Elizabeth will be escorted by two Type 45 destroyers, two Type 23 frigates, a nuclear submarine, a Tide-class tanker and RFA Fort Victoria.

The ship will also carry 24 F-35B jets, including US Marine Corps aircraft, in addition to a number of helicopters.

HMS Queen Elizabeth with Type 45 Destroyer

Prior to the deployment, it is understood that the Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group will go through a work-up trial off the west Hebrides range sometime in early 2021.

When asked about whether or not the UK has enough escorts to do this without impacting other commitment, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said, “The size and the scale of the escort depend on the deployments and the task that the carrier is involved in. If it is a NATO tasking in the north Atlantic, for example, you would expect an international contribution to those type of tasks, in the same way as we sometimes escort the French carrier or American carriers to make up that.

HMS Queen Elizabeth

It is definitely our intention, though, that the carrier strike group will be able to be a wholly UK sovereign deployable group. Now, it is probably not necessary to do that every single time we do it, depending on the tasking, but we want to do that and test doing it. Once we have done that, depending on the deployment, of course, we will cut our cloth as required.”

It is understood that the 2021 deployment will see the Carrier Strike Group sail in the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf and end up in the Pacific.

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