When it was handed over to the Royal Navy at the end of 2019, with a royal ceremony in Portsmouth included, great and memorable feats were expected from the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales that would earn it even more great and memorable headlines. Three years later she has achieved them, although probably not with the look that those responsible for her expected. More than a source of pride, the also known as R09 begins to become an annoying thorn in the pride of the Royal Navy. Annoying and expensive. Terribly expensive.
To the bulky bill for the construction of the ship, predictable given its dimensions, is now added another less expected: its repairs.
What is HMS Prince of Wales? One of the jewels of the Royal Navy, which presents it as “one of the most powerful surface warships ever built in the United Kingdom”. Its dimensions are impressive, of course. Its flight deck measures 70 meters wide by 280 meters long, allowing it to carry 36 F-35B aircraft and four huge Merlin helicopters.
Its file is completed with 65,000 tons of displacement, machinery that allows it to travel 500 miles per day and the capacity to accumulate food for 45 days and accommodate 700 crew members, although it can reach 1,600 with planes on board.
And how much did it cost? The estimated cost of construction was around 3,200 million pounds, around 3,600 million euros. The brand new aircraft carrier was commissioned in December 2019, during a crowded ceremony held at the Portsmouth Naval Base attended by 2,000 people and presided over by the then Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.
“This day marks the culmination of more than a decade of work by the country’s shipping and maritime industry, which has joined forces with the Ministry of Defense to build this magnificent vessel,” said Commanding Captain Darren Houston.
What happened to the ship? That at least during its first years its drift has not been as its promoters probably imagined it back in December 2019, when they gave it great compliments. At the beginning of 2021 The Telegraph already warned that in two years HMS Prince of Wales had remained at sea for only 87 days, a third of the time operated by its brother, HMS Queen Elizabeth, which between 2019 and 2020 accumulated 231 at sea journeys.
Not only that. According to the London newspaper, the brand new aircraft carrier had leaked twice in a matter of five months: once in the engine room and once in the crew area. During one of those episodes there was electrical equipment that remained under water for 24 hours. The cost of repair was then estimated at 3.3 million pounds and The Telegraph specified that another 2.2 million would be allocated to “repair work” on both the Prince of Wales and the Queen Elizabeth to prevent future leaks, which raised the bill at 5.5.
Have the problems been solved? It is not unreasonable to think that the latest news about the ship does not coincide with what the Royal Marine dome expected of it around Christmas 2020. In August 2022 the ship suffered a new failure — this time in the shaft of a propeller — shortly after leaving Portsmouth Naval Base to participate in flight tests with F-35B Lightning aircraft off the US coast. Her goal was to carry out exercises with the US Navy, the US Marine Corps and the Royal Canadian Navy.
And the latest news? A few days ago The Times revealed that the cost of repairing the aircraft carrier had skyrocketed to 20 million and it will continue in dry dock for three more months than expected. Since October, she says, she has been in Fife, Scotland. The planning announced by the Royal Navy provided that it would be ready by the end of February and that it would go to Portsmouth for updates to its aviation systems. The short-term horizon would now be something different.
The departure date of the Prince of Wales would have been delayed, however, until the end of May, the 23rd to be precise. The newspaper goes further and even points out that the ship was largely built by a business alliance with the Ministry of Defense now dissolved, so one of the keys is who will bear the cost.
Is it a unique case? The case of HMS Prince of Wales is a particularly bloody case due to how convulsive and expensive its first years have been, but the truth is that aircraft carriers are expensive ships, both in terms of their manufacture and subsequent maintenance. Here, in Spain, we have the example of the multipurpose amphibious assault ship Juan Carlos I. In November the Government gave its “OK” to a framework agreement to replace its propulsion system, which in practice implies a major reform of 30 million of euros.
Beyond Spain, in 2020 France’s plans to build a new propulsion aircraft carrier to retire the Charles de Gaulle were advanced at a cost that, according to estimates by the newspaper Le Monde at the time, could amount to 7,000 million euros. The objective would be for it to be 41% greater than its predecessor. Another country that has allocated a substantial amount to a similar project is the United States: its new “jewel”, the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is facing its final tests before it can be considered combat-ready, has cost 13.3 billion dollars.
Images: Royal Navy and Paul Townley (Flickr)
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