The Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth has been forced to pull out of the largest NATO exercise since the Cold War after a propeller shaft problem emerged during final checks.
Operation Steadfast Defender is due to take place between February and the end of May and is billed as “the first large scale NATO exercise where new defence plans will be put into action.”
HMS Queen Elizabeth and its sister ship HMS Prince of Wales were built between 2009 and 2018 to replace the Ark Royal and Illustrious, which were built in the 1970s and 1980s.
For a time the Royal Navy had no carriers at all and the new ships have both suffered a series of mechanical problems since they were first commissioned.
In September 2022 the Prince of Wales broke down off the Isle of Wight as it prepared to sail into the Atlantic to take part in joint manouevres with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, and the Royal Canadian Navy.
It suffered a malfunction with its starboard propeller and had to be replaced by the Queen Elizabeth.
Now the Prince of Wales has been called on to substitute for the fleet flagship in Steadfast Defender, which will involve 40 vessels from the United States, Canada, and several other NATO navies.
Meanwhile four P2000 “plastic patrol craft”—HMS Biter, Blazer, Exploit, and Trumpeter—left Portsmouth on Monday and headed for the Arctic Circle, where they will take part in exercises off the coast of Norway.
Vice Adm. Andrew Burns, who is the commander of the fleet, said, “Routine pre-sailing checks yesterday identified an issue with a coupling on HMS Queen Elizabeth’s starboard propeller shaft.”
Queen Elizabeth had been due to set sail from Portsmouth on Sunday but Vice Adm. Burns said, “HMS Prince of Wales will take her place on NATO duties and will set sail for Exercise Steadfast Defender as soon as possible.“
The Prince of Wales will lead a carrier strike group of eight ships, including the frigate HMS Somerset, two Tide-class tankers from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and some U.S., Spanish, and Danish vessels.
MOD Says ‘Separate and Not Linked’ to 2022 Incident
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) insists that although the problem was with the starboard propeller—the same issue that affected the Prince of Wales in 2022—they were not connected.An MOD spokesman said it was “separate and not linked” to the earlier defect on its sister ship.
He said: “The issue identified is with the ship’s shaft couplings. The ship’s propeller shafts are too big to be made from a single piece of metal, so each shaft is made from three sections, which are connected using shaft couplings, which bind the shaft sections together.”
Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the supreme allied commander of Europe, said of Steadfast Defender last month: “The alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro–Atlantic area via trans-Atlantic movement of forces from North America.”
“Steadfast Defender 2024 will be a clear demonstration of our unity, strength, and determination to protect each other, our values and the rules-based international order,” he added.
The massive exercise is designed to “show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometres, from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any conditions.”
With an increasingly belligerent Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, NATO has been under pressure to show its ability to respond to multiple military challenges in various theatres of operations.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and in response to that aggression, Finland and Sweden both joined NATO and the alliance has also rearmed Ukraine, which is currently keeping Russian forces at bay in the south and east of the country.
The Queen Elizabeth carrier was towed back into Portsmouth harbour after divers found the ship’s 33-tonne starboard propeller—the weight of 30 cars—had malfunctioned and the coupling holding it in place had broken.
When the Prince of Wales suffered a propeller shaft issue it was taken to back to the Babcock shipyard in Rosyth, Scotland, where it was built, and it took nine months to repair.
