Britain has had an aircraft carrier strike group in the Indo-Pacific since May, raising an obvious question: what would its two carriers do in the event of an Indo-Pacific war?
The best answer is escorting high-value supply and amphibious ships.
This is, in fact, the niche that the ships—HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales—have been looking for.
Last month, Prince of Wales became the first British aircraft carrier to call at an Australian port since 1997. It was here to participate in Exercise Talisman Sabre.
The long interval between visits was underscored by the fact that one of its escorts, HMS Richmond, was on its first deployment during the previous carrier group’s visit to Australia. Now the ship is on its final deployment as part of the carrier strike group and Operation Highmast.
The Royal Navy suffered a prolonged carrier capability gap between those two visits. Participation in Exercise Talisman Sabre by a multinational group centred on Prince of Wales was a key milestone in achieving full operating capability for both British carriers.
The exercise provided a rare, high-tempo opportunity to test the carrier strike group’s suite of capabilities, based around its combat wing of Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightnings (which, unlike F-35As and F-35Cs, can make short take-offs and vertical landings).
Although Britain’s fleet of F-35Bs is still understrength, the F-35B is highly versatile, capable of serving in air defence, ground strike, maritime strike and flying sensor roles.
For all the progress that has been achieved to reach this point, the ships are still a capability in search of a role, a bushy tail at risk of wagging the naval strategy dog.
The overstretch of the Royal Navy is glaringly apparent in the reported absence of a British submarine from the carrier group’s deployment. Submarines, not carriers, are the survivable platform of choice for deterrence missions in this region, hence their centrality to AUKUS, which includes a British commitment to rotationally deploy a boat out of Western Australia from as early as 2027, as part of SRF-West, a force that will mainly consist of US attack submarines operating from HMAS Stirling, near Perth.
Escort is also a serious and still highly relevant war role.
On this score, the meeting of Australian and British defence and foreign ministers in Sydney last month yielded a specific pledge to bring a Royal Navy submarine to Australia in 2026. This pledge and the signing in Geelong of a new 50-year bilateral submarine cooperation treaty should dispel doubts about Britain’s long-term intention to deliver under AUKUS’s first pillar.
The economies of scale and effort with Australia under AUKUS are also instrumental to Britain’s plans under the strategic defence review to expand its fleet of attack submarines from seven to as many as 12 boats—a far more viable figure for Britain’s intensifying defence requirements across all theatres.
The strategic case for Britain’s carriers is less certain than for submarines. It is not clear how suitable they are for a NATO role. Now that Iran has been at least temporarily defanged by Israel’s military campaign, their employment in a Middle East contingency appears less likely.
In the Indo-Pacific, where China’s area denial capabilities already hold even US aircraft carriers at risk, a strike role for Britain’s appears less likely still, given the F-35B’s restricted range and payload. In fact, Britain’s only carrier-strike weapons currently are JDAM freefall precision bombs. Its F-35Bs can’t attack well-defended targets from a safe distance.
But the carriers exist, so the issue is how best to use them. In case of a protracted maritime conflict in the Western Pacific, they could play useful and important roles, but more geared towards escort than strike.
The value of aircraft carriers in getting vital supply and amphibious ships through to their destinations must not be underestimated. The crowning example is Operation Pedestal in 1942, when three Royal Navy carriers defended a crucial supply force for Malta against ferocious air opposition.
The designation of the Prince of Wales flotilla as a carrier strike group, while not inaccurate, should not be taken restrictively. Escort is also a serious and still highly relevant war role.
Acting together, British and smaller Japanese aircraft carriers, and perhaps US flat-top assault ships, could relieve the burden of the US Navy’s aircraft carriers in a war. They could shepherd US transport ships carrying munitions, fuel and other supplies across the Pacific, for example, while US carriers were engaged in more offensive roles.
Fighters on the escorting carriers would offer an outer layer of protection against cruise missiles from ships, bombers or submarines. Britain, Japan and the US all operate F-35Bs from ships, so aircraft of the type could move from the ships of one navy to another, depending on where reinforcement were needed.
British and Japanese carriers could help to protect amphibious and surface task groups sailing from Australia against air and missile threats, as well as high-value cargoes and reinforcements coming to Australia.
Australia lacks air cover for its navy beyond the reach of land-based F-35As and Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornets.
British and Japanese carriers could help to protect amphibious and surface task groups sailing from Australia against air and missile threats, as well as high-value cargoes and reinforcements coming to Australia. They could also offer close air support for ground forces where air and surface threats to aircraft were moderate.
The integration of the air defence destroyers HMAS Sydney and HMAS Brisbane in the Prince of Wales group this year highlights strong synergy and mutual learning opportunities between the Australian and British navies. The carrier group’s ongoing interactions with Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are likely to deepen interoperability with another close partner for both Australia and Britain.
In a crisis closer to Britain, the Royal Navy’s carriers could of course be tied down in the Atlantic or Mediterranean. But Britain has identified an "indivisible" stake in Indo-Pacific security. Defence Secretary John Healey appears to be more convinced of this now than he was initially, based on his media interactions in Australia and the joint statement that followed the Australian-British ministerial meeting.
The rainbow composition of this year’s Talisman Sabre participants as well as of the carrier strike group itself have underlined the importance of developing operational concepts and composite capabilities for an inchoate maritime coalition. This is an important deterrent signal in its own right.
Despite likely limitations in the strike role against advanced adversaries, Britain’s aircraft carriers appear well-suited to conducting escort operations in this predominantly maritime theatre. That could be crucial for helping Australia to defend its maritime supply routes and its ability to project force into the first and second island chains off East Asia.
This article is part of a series about the Australia-UK strategic partnership. The British High Commission, Canberra, is supporting publication of the series, but the authors are responsible for the content.
Article reprinted with permission from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's analysis and commentary site The Strategist.