F-35 aircraft on HMS Prince of Wales
Image: dpa
While British aircraft carriers fly the flag on the world’s oceans, the army lacks ammunition and men. Now Britain is debating whether its armed forces would be ready for war.
EA week before the start of the largest NATO naval exercise in the North Atlantic in mid-February, the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, the flagship of the Royal Navy, had to cancel its planned participation. Damage to the drive shaft was noticed. A sign of the run-down state of the British armed forces, as former generals and admirals immediately publicly speculated?
Or an example of their flexible operational capability, as Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Tony Radakin asserts? One day after the planned departure date, the second British aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales left the port of Portsmouth to take the place of the sister ship in the NATO exercise.
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