HMS Queen Elizabeth deploys to the Indo-Pacific in 2021
HMS Queen Elizabeth deploys to the Indo-Pacific in 2021
WRITTEN BY TOM SHARPE
4 November 2020
Next year will see the Queen Elizabeth Carrier Task Group set sail for the Indo-Pacific. This will be the culmination of years of planning efforts that officially started in 2016. Before delving into the ‘where’, ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’, some thoughts on what a Carrier Strike Task Group (CSTG) is from Commodore Steve Moorehouse, Commander UK Carrier Strike Group, who captured this recently:
“Carrier Strike offers Britain choice and flexibility on the global stage; it reassures our friends and allies and presents a powerful deterrent to would-be adversaries”
In other words, HMS Queen Elizabeth and her escorts can conduct operations along the entire defence continuum. From diplomatic engagements to freedom of navigation, humanitarian aid, deterrence and, if necessary, high-level warfighting. It can do all this at range and with an unrivalled degree of autonomy.
Where to deploy
Imagine you are a military planner with an exciting new capability coming on-line and a chart of the world in front of you. You want to test the Royal Navy’s flagship, but not break it on the first outing.
Four choices probably formed the core of early discussions. If the deployment were to be six months long, you could head to the Mediterranean and join the EU mission there, interdicting arms, and migrants from Libya. Longstanding, logistically easy, climatically not too demanding and plenty to do, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean. In a similar vein, one could also consider deploying to the Baltic to conduct operations with NATO Spearhead forces deterring Russia. It is likely, however, that the two options which occupied most of the discussions would have been a Persian Gulf deployment or a far longer and more ambitious deployment to the Indo-Pacific.
Without knowing what the Royal Navy task group’s specific movements will be (and they will be largely classified until after each stage), it is obvious that FONOPS will form a large part of HMS Queen Elizabeth’s operational output in the Indo-Pacific.
The Persian Gulf sits deep in the heart of the Royal Navy’s psyche. For decades, one-third of the fleet’s standing tasks have been there. A new base, HMS Jufair, was recently built in Bahrain and there is a clear and identifiable threat (and therefore task) in the form of an Iranian regime that has threatened international maritime traffic and harassed UK and allied ships. With American carrier strike groups increasingly stretched, the temptation to contribute to the United States 5th Fleet, running out of Bahrain, would have been strong.
So too however would have been a deployment to the Indian Ocean and Pacific, involving China, Japan and even North and South Korea. Out of range to the Royal Navy except for a major deployment, and with every geopolitical pointer suggesting that is where the UK’s strategic focus should now lie, it is, therefore, logical to suspect this would have been the frontrunner for many of the discussions in Whitehall. While the most ambitious (and relevant), it is also worth noting, some of the other tasks could easily be undertaken en-route.
Of course, these decisions are not solely made by the Royal Navy’s senior leadership. Many voices will have had a view; No 10, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) being the most obvious although one should not assume that they will have been aligned throughout. It is likely to have generated debate at the highest level over what HMS Queen Elizabeth would do once out there; support a security agenda off Japan or fly the flag and undertake a prosperity drive off India? Lofty words but what does that then mean to the overall shape of the UK’s carrier deployment East of Suez? All these groups would have been brought together at various points by a Joint Steering Group hosted in the MOD in London. The Royal Navy would have been very much present at these, but not the senior stakeholder.
Why the Indo-Pacific?
The Indo-Pacific is fast becoming the most important geopolitical region on the planet. China, the world's second-largest economy, continues to assert sovereignty over the South China Sea, an area that spans 3.5 million square kilometres that are also claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. Even though these claims were ruled illegal by an international tribunal in The Hague in 2016, the ruling was both unenforceable and roundly ignored by Beijing.
The United States, as the region’s principal security guarantor, has objected to China’s claims from the outset. Ironically, it remains a non-signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); the very framework agreement designed to articulate what the boundaries between international and territorial waters should be. Nevertheless, the US Navy maintains a continuous carrier presence in the South China Sea, conducting what in naval vernacular is called Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) — a task as old as navies themselves.
The basis for these patrols was articulated by then-Secretary of Defence Ash Carter in October 2015.
“Make no mistake, the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as we do around the world, and the South China Sea will not be an exception”.
In July this year Secretary of State Pompeo (unsurprisingly) doubled down on this:
“We are making clear: Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful… The PRC’s predatory world view has no place in the 21st century”.
Without knowing what the Royal Navy task group’s specific movements will be (and they will be largely classified until after each stage), it is obvious that FONOPS will form a large part of HMS Queen Elizabeth’s operational output in the Indo-Pacific. HMS Albion concluded a similar operation in the South China Sea in 2018. Although decided by planners years prior, given the recent assertiveness of Beijing in the region and the rate at which the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) are building ships to enforce China’s ambitions, a Royal Navy carrier deployment, operating alongside perhaps Australian and other coalition partners, is both timely and an important signal regarding the United Kingdom’s commitment to upholding international law and UNCLOS.
What to send to sea?
In the perfect planning world, the ‘where’ and the ‘why’ would lead the show. Sooner or later, however, the people who tell you what you must do invariably get involved.
There remains a standing joke in the Planning Directorate of the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters, Northwood (PJHQ) when a new mission comes along.. “the answer is six Typhoons and a frigate, sorry, what was the question?”. This makes light of a sometimes-depressing truth; your plans can be lofty, though, if not properly resourced, they will fail. The reality is that the United Kingdom’s defence capabilities continually tread a tightrope in order to ensure operations are properly resourced. Nevertheless, this is a flagship deployment in every sense, so a degree of financial support will have been factored in.
The most important question is can HMS Queen Elizabeth meet the potential threats it may face in the Indo-Pacific? If it can, then everything thereafter should be straightforward.
To determine what threats exist, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) will have run several scenarios through their system (using a sophisticated series of algorithms). In reference to the aforementioned PJHQ joke, it was probably not a huge surprise when the answer was 1 x aircraft carrier, 2 x destroyers (air and surface warfare), 2 x frigates (surface and subsurface warfare), 1 x nuclear powered Astute-class submarine and 1 x Tide class replenishment ship. This size group is now considered the ‘national sovereign minimum’ and should have the ability to detect, deter and if necessary fight most threats around the world, as well as sustain itself without host nation support – a key tenet of modern, carrier-based operations.
The issue of just how many F-35B fighter jets to embark is likely to have been the focus of some debate. Since the days of Joint Harrier operations, huge strides have been taken towards collegiate Royal Navy and Royal Air Force integration over fixed-wing operations at sea. Likewise, Royal Navy and US Marine Corps cooperation is already working well on the carrier. But, to ignore the possibility of sub-agendas being run counter to this, is to ignore the reality of running expensive kit in a (very) resource-constrained environment. Just who ‘owns’ the jets when onboard makes a big difference in how they can be used. Service leadership is essential if these discussions are to continue to be resolved amicably.
Image credit: Royal Navy
How the UK carrier will deploy?
With a justifiable mission and resources allocated against possible tasks and threats just how does moving more than 100,000 tons of steel, over 2,000 people and a nuclear reactor around the world work (the United States achieves this with just one ship)? The answer is to break the deployment into clear phases; assess both the task and the threat in each, then sub-allocate resources accordingly.
The work-up phase will look very different from the Mediterranean transit, which, in turn, will look different from the Freedom of Navigation Operations phase in the South China Sea. Ships will come and go from the group depending on what other tasks are required en route. These may include NATO ships in the Mediterranean, perhaps ships from Gulf allies when East of Suez and Australian ships when further into the Indian Ocean and Pacific. These interoperability exercises will be key to ensuring when it comes down to it, HMS Queen Elizabeth and her carrier group will have as many partners as possible from which to draw support. Nevertheless, when defence diplomacy tasks and various dispersed inter-navy exercises are complete, there will be red shaded areas on the chart that mark ‘core task group to form up around QE’.
This is HMS Queen Elizabeth’s fighting stance and is based on a layered defence. In brief, the carrier and the tanker sit in the middle with Type-45 destroyers outside forming an air defence bubble. To give an idea of scale, if the destroyer was in the Dover Strait, it could see everything in the air up to Manchester and south to just beyond Paris. The frigates further out still, often ahead of the task group, provide anti-submarine and surface defence along the navigation track. The Astute class submarine will be well ahead of the group looking for other submarines and warships, sanitising chokepoints and conducting general intelligence-gathering operations.
Despite the Type 45s having one of the best air defence radars in the world, the Earth’s curvature means it cannot see beyond its radar horizon — hence the requirement for early warning aircraft. This sees a chink in the 'ring of steel' begin to appear as the delayed arrival into UK service of the Merlin helicopter (converted to conduct this task) called ‘Crowsnest’, becomes apparent. Additionally, the T-45 radar has a significant blind spot when it comes to ballistic missile defence, an ever-increasing threat, especially in the context of China’s DF-26 carrier-killer missiles.
Finally, there is the F-35B itself in the outer ring, hoovering up information, ensuring (via fighter controllers in the carrier and destroyers) that the battlespace is as mapped out as possible. In essence, the group creates a giant network over thousands of square miles. In a conflict at sea, whoever understands the operating environment better, be that space, cyber, air, surface or subsurface, particularly when the enemy is actively trying to confuse and/or deny, is most likely to win.
While there are numerous variations, this is the basic task group operating principle and is designed to ensure aircraft carriers are protected in order for them to safely discharge their primary warfighting mission — striking enemy targets.
The likelihood of challenging interactions remains high as it is nigh on impossible to transit the Strait of Hormuz without being rushed by the Iranian Navy. Furthermore, it would be surprising if Beijing did not send a surface action group to say 'hello' to HMS Queen Elizabeth in the South China Sea or Western Pacific. The same is true for Moscow in relation to the Eastern Mediterranean. Misunderstandings at sea can happen quickly, and the UK Carrier Task Group, once deployed, will seek to make sure that while it must not escalate, it remains ready to respond if required. This abides as a fine line and one the US and Royal Navy have for many years trodden in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere.
Final thoughts
This Indo-Pacific deployment marks a step-change in UK naval operations, away from the singleton deployments of the last few decades and back towards task group operations at scale. In HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Tides, Astute, the Type 45 (radar) and the Type 23 (sonar), the Royal Navy has capabilities that remain genuinely world-leading. Having them all in one place and sending it to such an important and yet unvisited (by the RN) part of the world is a truly exciting prospect.
Inevitably, there is a ‘but’ and it is a big one, perhaps typified by the Type 45 Destroyer. If the ratio of hulls to ships-at-readiness is 3-1, which it is, then HMS Queen Elizabeth taking two T45s accounts for all the Navy’s destroyers. Hardly surprising, “what is it you would like us to stop doing?” is the phrase heard regularly from the financial planning arm of the Navy when new tasks come along.
For a Navy to be genuinely world class it needs both balance and mass. The ability to conduct strike operations has reintroduced balance to the Royal Navy but there is a real danger, given the challenge the defence purse now faces due to COVID-19, it may come at the expense of mass, with further defence cuts looming. For many this is simply madness, when you consider that to build and run these ships for the next 50 years, will cost the Treasury approximately 0.2 per cent of GDP.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Commander Tom Sharpe OBE RN (retd) spent 27 years in the Royal Navy, 20 of which were at sea. He commanded four different warships; Northern Ireland, fishery protection, a Type 23 frigate and the ice patrol vessel, HMS Endurance during which he was appointed OBE for his role in saving her during a flood. He has an MA in International Relations from King’s College, London. Image Credit: Royal Navy.