In yet another rebuke to the United Kingdom, US President Donald Trump said British aircraft carriers were “toys” as compared to those of the US Navy. The statement did not go down well with many in the UK.
Speaking at the White House, Trump slammed the UK for not joining the offensive strikes against Iran.
“We had the UK say that ‘we’ll send’, this is three weeks ago, ‘we’ll send our aircraft carriers’, which aren’t the best aircraft carriers by the way. They’re toys compared to what we have,” Trump said on camera while lambasting the lack of military help from the NATO allies in the ongoing war. “But ‘we’ll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over’. I said, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful, thank you very much. Don’t bother. We don’t need it,” he added.
The complaint comes just days after Trump claimed that he had requested two UK aircraft carriers for deployment in the Middle East.
According to Trump, British PM Keir Starmer initially refused the request but later agreed to send them. Downing Street, however, has firmly denied any such agreement. Instead, the UK dispatched the destroyer HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean after a missile was fired from Lebanon toward a British military base in Cyprus.
When asked about Trump’s repeated insults, PM Starmer said they were meant to exert pressure on him.
This is not the first time that Trump has slammed the United Kingdom. Earlier, he lambasted London for denying access to military bases for conducting strikes on Iran. “The U.K. has been very, very uncooperative with that stupid island that they have,” he added, referring to the Chagos. “They ruin relationships. It’s a shame.”
However, when Starmer made an unprecedented U-turn and provided access to bases like RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia for limited “defensive strikes,” Trump retorted, saying, “Well, it’s a very late response.” “I was surprised because the relationship is so good,” he continued. “But this has never happened before. They were really pretty much our first ally. … They didn’t want us to use the island — the so-called island — which for some reason they gave up rights to it,” the President added.
More recently, Trump blasted his allies in NATO, of which the UK is a part, for failing to help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which remains under a de facto closure enforced by Iran. He referred to them as “cowards” and said, “Without the USA, NATO IS A PAPER TIGER! In a post on his Truth Social.
Earlier, amid Starmer’s reluctance to aid the US war against Iran, the US President called Starmer “no Winston Churchill” and declared that the PM had made a “big mistake” by refusing to back the US in the Iran War.
Disgruntled by the British position, Trump said, the alliance across the Atlantic was “always the best until Keir came along.”
However, Starmer has since signed on to the effort for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, British officials are currently mulling sending a civilian or Royal Navy ship to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where the blockade of the Gulf route is having a catastrophic impact on international energy shipments.
“We have world-leading capabilities in terms of autonomous mine hunting, as well as fantastic destroyer capability with our Type 45s, and also the development of a hybrid navy concept, which provides us with opportunities to avoid putting people into harm’s way to help secure the strait,” a British official said.
The jibe against British carriers did not go down well with Royal Navy officials and veterans. Al Carns, a former Royal Marines officer and current veterans minister, defended the carriers in a conversation with Times Radio.
“I’m going to leave President Trump to say what he needs to say, Carns said. “Let me tell you from my perspective, I was the chief of staff of the carrier strike force and was deployed on those carriers. They have formidable capabilities, and I’m deeply proud of them. I’m also deeply proud of Great Britain. I think it is great. We have a fantastic place in the world.”
Carns also defended NATO, the defence organisation that Trump incorrectly claims has “never come” to the US’s aid, emphasising that it did so following the September 11 terror attacks in New York in 2001.
Meanwhile, a UK-based commentator, Henry Bolton, said: “Carriers are difficult to compare. The Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth class carriers are smaller than the US Nimitz class ships but are significantly more capable than the US America class ships.”
Further, he added, “The Royal Navy’s problem is not its carriers, it is the appalling lack of investment made into the rest of the Fleet. The RN has some of the best kit in the world, but one ship can only be in one place at one time.”
British Aircraft Carriers
The UK’s Royal Navy inducted two aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, in 2017 and 2019.
Both aircraft carriers are STOVL (Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing) carriers optimised for the F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter. While they use a ski-jump ramp instead of arrestor wires or catapults, they are built with room to convert to CATOBAR in the future, if needed.
Additionally, both carriers have a unique twin-island superstructure, with the aft island overseeing flight operations and the forward island managing ship navigation and command. This increases the flight deck area, reduces wind turbulence over the deck, and increases survivability, since one island can support the other if damaged.
The HMS Queen Elizabeth is a 65,000-ton carrier that was christened in 2014 and launched in 2017. With a length of 284 metres or roughly the size of three football pitches, HMS Queen Elizabeth symbolised the Royal Navy’s return to large-scale carrier operations after decades focused on smaller vessels.
It has a speed of about 25 knots and a range of about 10,000 nautical miles, as per publicly available information.
The ship has a unique design featuring a twin-island superstructure. The forward island handles navigation and ship operations, while the aft island manages flight control (FLYCO). This improves visibility, separates functions for redundancy, and accommodates exhausts from the gas turbines. The flight deck has nine decks below it.
The ship embarked on its first major deployment in 2021, conducting voyages to the Indo-Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. However, in November 2021, an F-35B from the carrier crashed during a routine flight in the Mediterranean Sea, as EurAsian Times reported at the time.
The second aircraft carrier, referred to by the US President as a ‘toy,’ is the HMS Prince of Wales, the second Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, and currently serves as its Fleet Flagship. Along with her sister ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08), it provides the UK with significant power-projection, carrier-strike, amphibious support, and humanitarian capabilities worldwide. It was christened in 2017 and commissioned in 2019.
Similar in size and features to the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the HMS Prince of Wales embarked on a major deployment to the Indo-Pacific last year, along with a cutting-edge Type-45 destroyer, a Type-23 frigate, a Tide-class tanker, and a submarine, as previously reported by EurAsian Times.
Notably, the deployment was positioned as a deterrence mission against China, and some reports in British media stated the British aircraft carriers have a huge advantage over the current aircraft carriers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), and asserted that the British Prince of Wales aircraft carrier can deal with both the Liaoning and Shandong aircraft carriers of China at the same time.
During this deployment, the carrier conducted joint exercises with the Indian Navy, paid port visits to Singapore, Tokyo, and Darwin (Australia), and participated in multinational operations with Canada, Norway, and Spain.
It is also pertinent to mention that the Royal Navy has recorded a loss of capability over the years. During the Falklands War, the Royal Navy had four aircraft carriers, but this number has since been reduced to two. Similarly, the number of destroyers has also decreased from 13 to 6.
At the same time, both carriers have been beset by problems, including leaks, fires, and failed propellers. In fact, previous reports suggested that one of the two carriers would be mothballed to save costs as the British government reevaluates costs and defence priorities. Nonetheless, a decision in this regard has not yet been made.
This may have been one of the reasons why President Trump referred to the British carriers as toys. However, by any stretch of the imagination, the statement was a stretch, as noted by the British media and officials.
- Contact the author at sakshi.tiwari13 (at) outlook.com
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