Monday 26 June 2017 00.01 BST
Ewen MacAskill Defence
correspondent
The £3.5bn cost of the vessel is so high that doubts have
been raised over whether the Royal Navy can afford enough fighters for it
Captain Jerry Kyd seems remarkably relaxed given he is
scheduled on Monday to take to sea for the first time one of the biggest and
most expensive defence projects in British history, the aircraft carrier HMS
Queen Elizabeth.
To reach open sea, he will have to conduct two
complicated manoeuvres, firstly to take it from the Rosyth dockyard basin where
the carrier was built and then under the three Forth bridges. The calculations
are fine but the prospect of miscalculation does not appear to scare him.
As well as all the electronic devices available to him,
he will make a gesture towards tradition, conducting a final check with an
instrument used by mariners since at least the 18th century, a sextant, before
heading under the bridges.
The gap could be so small, even with the mast lowered,
that he joked he might be able to run his fingers under the bridge. And what
will he do if he gets the calculation wrong? “Duck,” he said.
Work began in 2009 on the £3.5bn carrier, which has been
dogged by delays and overruns in cost and questions over whether there will be
enough money to put a full complement of planes aboard.
After about six weeks of sea trials in the North Sea, the
plan is for the carrier to return to Rosyth for adjustments before sailing
later this year to its home port, Portsmouth. The first of the planes is
planned to arrive next year and the carrier is scheduled to be operational in
2020, bound for anywhere from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea.
HMS Queen Elizabeth and a second carrier, the Prince of
Wales, also being built at Rosyth and still covered in scaffolding, will
together cost more than £6bn.
The carriers, along with the Trident nuclear programme,
account for a huge chunk of the defence budget. Critics within the military
complain such high-profile projects have been at the expense of surface ships,
soldiers and the air force. They also question whether aircraft carriers are anachronistic
and vulnerable to attack from increasingly sophisticated missiles.
Asked by the Guardian whether the carrier is a white
elephant, Kyd unsurprisingly, disagreed. “These assets give you a global
presence, a serious punch, anywhere you want, at immediate notice,” he said. “I
think it is a pretty good investment at £6bn. In 50 years from now, we will
look back and say that was extremely good value and they will be used a lot.”
Each carrier can hold 36 planes and four helicopters. The
navy is hoping to have 24 F-35s by 2023 and a further 24 by 2025. In addition,
the US marines will fly their own F-35s off the carriers, though the number is
still under discussion.
The carrier has a crew of about 700 which could
theoretically double depending on the number of planes aboard. One of the
biggest fears is from fire and, to counter that, it has 750 doors that can seal
off compartments.
About 15% of the 700 crew members are female, compared
with a navy average of about 9%. Three of the crew are Muslim. One of them,
Mohamed Khan, the head chef, would normally be off at present because of
Ramadan but he did not want to miss out on the preparations for going to sea.
“Normally I take the whole month off, but this is the biggest ship ever and I
wanted to be a part of that,” said Khan, 42, who has been in the navy for 16
years. He added that, to compensate, under Islamic law he will have to fast for
30 days before the next Ramadan and make charitable payments.
Among improvements for the crew are bigger bunks, three
feet wide compared with two foot, three inches before. The captain too gets a
bigger bunk but not a double bed, as do his American counterparts. The British
navy is too puritanical for that, Kyd laughed.
Source: theguardian.com
Related post:
Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier: Details
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