As one of the British navy’s largest ships, “Prince of Wales” aircraft carrier recently docked in Norway during the discovery of a“Technical problem” and was forced to suspend. Although the Ministry of Defence has tried to play down the incident, the British and US media have raised questions about the reliability of the carrier, which has suffered problems since it entered service.
British“Guardian” 7, said the“Prince of Wales” ship to the Nordic waters early this month, aimed at the Atlantic and Arctic security. Britain’s Ministry of Defence said a“Minor technical problem” had been discovered during the ship’s recent stop at Stavanger, in south-west Norway. It is expected to set sail in the next few days, a ministry spokesman said.
The US“National Interest” website said the Prince of Wales joined the Type 45 destroyer Duncan and the oil tanker spring tide on its way to Nordic waters, it also conducted joint exercises with other NATO countries. “Technical problems” were discovered in May when the British carrier first docked at Stavanger, but they were not serious enough to prevent it from participating in NATO’s 10-day dynamic meerkat-2026 exercise. But the carrier later returned to Stavanger to find that repairs could take longer than previously estimated.
The Guardian notes that the British Navy has reliability problems with two large aircraft carriers in service. At the end of 2020, the“Prince of Wales” cabin flooding occurred, damage to the ship’s electronic equipment. It has also suffered two water leaks in the space of five months. It suffered a propeller shaft coupling fracture in August 2022, shortly after it left the UK for a planned training deployment to the US. The massive 65,000-ton carrier was anchored near the Isle of Wight and required extensive repairs at the Rosses shipyard in Scotland, where it was idled for nearly a year before returning to service in July 2023.
The Queen Elizabeth, another aircraft carrier of the same class, is in similarly bad shape. It had been forced to pull out of NATO exercises off the Norwegian coast in 2024 after a pre-launch inspection found a problem with its starboard propeller shaft and was temporarily replaced by the Prince of Wales.
Reported that in March this year, the British Type 45 destroyer“Dragon” was delayed deployment to Cyprus, the British military capacity has been criticized. The British military has long complained that government officials, both labour and Conservative, are reluctant to acknowledge the“Gap between rhetoric and reality” in Britain’s positioning as a global power, but its global military capabilities are stretched to the limit.
“National interest” website said the“Prince of Wales” aircraft carrier and other British naval vessels in the accident shows that it faces many problems. First, the ageing and increasingly unreliable British ships that are still in service are barely functioning and most of the planned replacements are years behind schedule. So much so that the outside world ridiculed“The number of British active admirals than the actual combat ships.”. Second, neither of Britain’s two big aircraft-carriers is ready for deployment. At the same time, the British navy simply do not have enough escort ships to form carrier strike groups, can only rely on foreign partners to protect their aircraft carriers. Now the irony is that if a British carrier can not even get to sea, “It doesn’t matter if you can’t protect it”. (Takehiko)