Ark Royal to depart from Portsmouth

[158747]

Former Royal Navy aircraft carrier Ark Royal is due to depart from Portsmouth Harbour tomorrow en route to shipbreakers in Turkey.

 

[Heinz57]

The Invincible class are/were great ships. Such a shame that this is their fate.

'Were going to save money by scrapping three perfectly good aircraft carriers* and build two new multi-billion pound ships'

Rrrright

The last of the class, Illustrious is being de-comisioned next year. But thankfuly the government are in favour to keeping it as a museum.

*Incidentaly, Invincibles de-comission was announced only a year or two after it had a major re-furb that would have given it another 20 odd years of service.

 

[ainsworth74]

'Were going to save money by scrapping three perfectly good aircraft carriers and build two new multi-billion pound ships'

Well we are. The money on the two QE class ships has for all intents and purposes been spent (it being more expensive to cancel than continue the order) so if you accept that this money is going to be spent either way by removing the two remaining Vince class ships from service early you do save money in terms of running costs.

It's convoluted for sure but does make a strange kind of sense. At least as much as any MoD procurement decision can make.

That being said we do need new carriers. Invincible would be approaching her thirty-third birthday now. By the time Queen Elizabeth is handed over the Royal Navy (note this is not the same as being an effective military asset) Illustrious would have been thirty-four and by the time Prince of Wales is completed (again that doesn't mean effective military asset) Ark Royal would have also been around thirty-four. When you consider that you look to get around thirty years out of a warship, that's pretty good going. You also have to consider that the getting F-35s operating from Vince class carriers does not appear to have been a realistic prospect. So perhaps they've gone earlier than they should but that doesn't change the fact that they do need replacing in the near future. Especially when you consider that QE isn't expected to become militarily effective until 2020 (when Lusty would be approaching forty!).

Though having said all that I'm not convinced that the QEs are the best design we could have procured. A couple of slightly smaller carriers would probably have been better. Something in the size range of a Cavour class or maybe a Wasp class would have better suited us in my opinion rather than the 65,000 tonne beheamoths that we are getting. Hell if we'd gone with a Cavour sized design we might have been able to get three.

 

[Yew]

That being said we do need new carriers. Invincible would be approaching her thirty-third birthday now. By the time Queen Elizabeth is handed over the Royal Navy (note this is not the same as being an effective military asset) Illustrious would have been thirty-four and by the time Prince of Wales is completed (again that doesn't mean effective military asset) Ark Royal would have also been around thirty-four. When you consider that you look to get around thirty years out of a warship, that's pretty good going. You also have to consider that the getting F-35s operating from Vince class carriers does not appear to have been a realistic prospect. So perhaps they've gone earlier than they should but that doesn't change the fact that they do need replacing in the near future. Especially when you consider that QE isn't expected to become militarily effective until 2020 (when Lusty would be approaching forty!).

At the time the decommissioning was announced, the plan was to use Catobar F35's this has changed back to Stovol F35's so I suppose at least some testing could be done on Illustrious, if it was desired to get things operational within a shorter timeframe.

And The INS Viirat is still operational, and she was laid down in 1942!