Latest Defence Fiasco: I See No Ships

There’s a decent discussion to be had on defence priorities and on the future of both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Furthermore, you can argue about the number of aircraft carriers this country might need. There’s a case for saying that the resources devoted to the new Queen Elizabeth Class carriers could have been more usefully employed elsewhere. But if there’s a case for scrapping the carriers there’s also a case for building two of them or, though this is not on the cards, three “super-carriers”. What makes no sense, however, is building just one aircraft carrier.

And yet that’s where we seem to be. Actually, it’s worse than that. Current plans – to apportion this cockamamie proposal with a level of thought and sense it hardly deserves – are to build both carriers but use one of them, the Prince of Wales, as a helicopter-carrying amphibious commando ship.