ABOARD THE HMS PRINCE OF WALES — An F-35 stealth fighter roars down the flight deck of Britain’s newest aircraft carrier, hurtling toward a ski-jump ramp above the Norwegian Sea.
Seconds later, the jet is airborne, climbing into the sky. Silence returns to the flight deck of the HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s flagship.
The Prince of Wales can carry up to 36 F-35 fighter jets, but only a handful were aboard when Business Insider visited the warship while it was operating off the coast of Norway this week.
“We have a relatively modest, yet highly efficient, air wing with the aircraft that we have,” Capt. Ben Power, the carrier’s commanding officer, said on the bridge.
Even with relatively few fighters onboard, the carrier can sustain high-tempo flight operations.
The Prince of Wales, currently leading the UK carrier strike group, is deployed to the Norwegian Sea for the second phase of Operation Firecrest, a deterrence mission in the Arctic and North Atlantic. It is sailing with NATO warships while also participating in the alliance’s recurring Neptune Strike exercise.
The carrier can accommodate up to 72 aircraft, including 36 F-35Bs, the short take-off and vertical landing variants — and a mix of helicopters, like the Merlin Mk2, which is designed for anti-submarine warfare. The ship can also carry up to 1,600 sailors and Royal Marines.
Power said the Prince of Wales is smaller than the US Navy’s Ford-class carriers and typically operates with just 1,200 sailors, compared with nearly 5,000 aboard USS Gerald R. Ford, which can carry more than 75 aircraft, including dozens of fighter jets.
We are a “very lean-crewed, effective, and efficient platform, as you would expect, because this is very modern technology,” Power said of the Prince of Wales.
Power credited the Prince of Wales’ high sortie rate to its well-trained crew and advanced technology aboard the $4 billion vessel, commissioned in 2019. He singled out the automated weapons-handling system that moves bombs and missiles from magazines deep inside the ship to the flight deck, reducing the manpower needed to arm fighter jets and get them back into the air.
Both of the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers use the Highly Mechanised Weapon Handling System. Power called it an “incredibly efficient process” that distinguishes the British ships from other NATO carriers, which use weapons elevators but often rely more heavily on personnel to move munitions around.
“It’s effectively all automated,” Power said. “It’s a series of lifts and a series of processes that’s run by a computer that, when we place the demand signal for the weapon systems, they are delivered. So there are no humans in that process. It’s all fully automated.”
The Prince of Wales demonstrated its ability to operate with a larger air wing last year, carrying 24 F-35s. The UK said at the time it was the largest number of fifth-generation jets ever assembled on either of its Queen Elizabeth-class carriers.
The number of fighters aboard varies depending on the mission and potential threats, officers said. They argued that operating with fewer jets does not necessarily limit the carrier’s effectiveness.
Commodore Richard Hewitt, the UK carrier strike group commander, said the Prince of Wales can sustain flight operations 24 hours a day, adding that “there is considerable planning that goes into these deployments to make sure that we’re ready.”
A flight deck officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that when the Prince of Wales reached full operational capability last year, it demonstrated the ability to launch eight jets at 30-second intervals.
During the first phase of Operation Firecrest in early July, F-35 jets took off from the Prince of Wales to conduct NATO air policing operations, marking the first time that the alliance has launched such missions from a European aircraft carrier.
Hewitt characterized the mission as “hugely successful” and said the carrier could play a greater role in such operations in the future.
“Prince of Wales was the first NATO carrier to deliver that capability off the coast of Iceland,” Power said. “We are positioned and able and ready to do further policing operations should we be required to do so.”
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