Navy’s carriers ‘will only go to war alongside allies’

THE national security adviser has cast doubt on whether the Government would send the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers to war without support from allies.

Sir Mark Sedwill said he believed the carriers would “inevitably” only be deployed in a “contested environment” alongside other forces. His comments suggest the Government would not agree to send the two new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers into a conflict similar to the Falklands War, when Britain fought Argentina alone.

Meanwhile, Sir Mark also said he believed Russia and its arsenal of nuclear weapons continued to pose an “existential threat” to the UK, admitting there were “areas of vulnerability” in Britain’s national security.

The Navy has been without an aircraft carrier since 2014 but two new ships – HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales – are due to become operational in the coming years.

Sir Mark told the defence select committee: “We will be one of only about six countries in the world that has this kind of strategic projection capability when the carriers are fully operational.

“But it is our intention, because of that, to use them with allies … We will see what happens in the circumstances but that is part of the thinking about the use of the carriers.

“It is projecting them as a British sovereign capability but one that will almost inevitably, I would actually say inevitably, be used in a context of allied operations of some kind if used in a contested environment.”

Margaret Thatcher’s government sent two aircraft carriers – HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible – to help take back the Falkland Islands in 1982. They were accompanied by an array of destroyers, frigates and submarines.

Sir Mark’s comments are likely to spark questions about if and when the UK would embark on a similar course of action in the future. The two new aircraft carriers are the largest vessels ever built for the Navy. The 65,000-ton HMS Queen Elizabeth cost £3.5billion to build and was officially commissioned in December last year. It is intended to become fully operational in 2020.

Meanwhile, Sir Mark also used his appearance to urge the UK’S fellow Nato members to meet a commitment to spend 2 per cent of their GDP on defence, adding that Russia was the UK’S “primary strategic threat”.

“It is very important when we think about Russia that we don’t think about it in an entirely bilateral way. It is not just the UK up against Russia, it is Nato that is the linchpin of our defence.”

He added: “If all of the other Nato countries achieved that 2 per cent target, that would be the equivalent of about an additional $100 billion (£73 billion) a year devoted to the defence.”