According to The Sunday Times, Royal Navy will not receive the newest aircraft carrier Prince of Wales worth almost $13,4 billion.
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London was planning to enhance its Royal Navy by 2018 with its two newest aircraft carriers, Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, equipped with the fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets (Joint Strike Fighter).
The jets were the reason for the high cost of the ships. Each plane costs approximately $150 million, and the price is likely to increase. Now the London carrier program has been reduced by 50 percent.
Initially, Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales were designed as same-type 65,000 tons ships 280 meters long. The designers claimed that the aircraft carriers were capable of developing speed over 25 knots (approximately 47 km/hour) and independently sail for up to 18,500 kilometers.
Is Great Britain losing its navy superpower status? What will the re-designed aircraft carriers program result in?
Pravda.ru interviewed Alexander Pikayev, Director of the Department of Disarmament and Conflict at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations and Konstantin Sivkov, First Vice President of the Academy of Geopolitical Issues in Moscow.
Konstantin Sivkov:
“The reasons for suspending the project are easy to understand. In the past, the British Royal Navy had well-defined goals which involved not letting Soviet submarines into the Atlantic, namely to the Faroe Islands-Iceland area. Now there is no such goal, and this brings about changes.
The British Royal Navy does not exist independently. It is a part of NATO troops and, therefore, is meant to participate in the actions of this block. After World War II, the British aircraft career fleet was the second in the North-Atlantic alliance after the American fleet. However, it was very different.
The US Navy was the basis of NATO troops, whereas the British Royal Navy was an auxiliary.
Americans had Nimitz supercarriers equipped with a hundred planes each. English carriers, such as Invisible, were not competitive since they were only equipped with 20 Sea Harrier fighter jets with a limited actions radius.
Of course, some people in the British Defense Department counted on getting the new aircraft carrier that would revive the British navy superpower.
Although Prince of Wales was more powerful than the existing aircraft carries owned by London, it was still incapable of performing tasks feasible for similar American carriers.
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