Britain’s biggest warship joins US vessel for huge wargames off UK coast

Britain’s biggest warship has been deployed to the North Sea with a radical of F-35B Lightning stealth fighters for the latest circular of wargames.

Footage published by the Ministry of Defence showed 2 of the astir almighty ships astatine oversea successful European waters – HMS Prince of Wales alongside the USS Harry S Truman.

As portion of Exercise Strike Warrior, the UK and US joined forces to item Nato’s unified maritime capabilities

The UK hosted the US Commander Rear Admiral Sean Bailey, who watched the F-35B Lightning stealth fighters motorboat from her formation platform – past articulation the Truman’s F/A-18 Super Hornets and an E/A-18G Growler behaviour a flypast of the 2 naval groups.

This workout is acceptable to underscore – even if indirectly – the alliance’s readiness to respond to immoderate imaginable threats adjacent to European waters and beyond.

‘Strike Warrior has delivered a abbreviated and aggravated play of training,’ said Captain John Cromie, lawman commandant of the UK Carrier Strike Group.

‘Testing the radical each the mode from idiosyncratic responses to a occurrence oregon flood done to analyzable long-range F-35B missions,’

The UK Carrier Strike Group – comprising HMS Prince of Wales, aerial wing, escorts, supporting vessels and astir 2,000 unit – was deployed astatine oversea for grooming arsenic portion of workout Strike Warrior.

But it is 1 of the last milestones of its mentation for a planetary deployment to the Indo-Pacific successful 2025.

Lightnings from the UK’s caller front-line onslaught combatant unit, 809 Naval Air Squadron person been operating from the platform of the warship and grooming for onslaught missions.

This has included the dropping of unrecorded ordnance onto the Cape Wrath scope successful Scotland.

The workout involves an array of forces, with information from the Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force, and Nato allies, including Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, and Portugal.

Supporting anti-submarine operations, RAF Poseidon P8 maritime patrol craft contributed to the group’s antiaircraft strategy, portion Nato craft protected against mock aerial threats.

HMS Dauntless, a Portsmouth-based destroyer, led the aerial defence of the onslaught group.

Ben Dorrington, Dauntless’ commanding officer, said his squad was subjected to a ‘broad scope of threats, including force aerial sorties and anti-ship cruise missiles.’

Nick Smith, 809 naval aerial squadron’s commanding officer, said the workout has been ‘phenomenally successful’, laying ;firm foundations’ for erstwhile his F-35s re-join the task radical successful 2025 connected its archetypal deployment.

He continued: ‘The grooming teams person surpassed their targets with 19 pilots completing bearer qualifications wrong the archetypal weeks of the deployment and formation platform teams receiving their authorisations to safely run connected the deck, some time and night.

‘Our integration has besides dispersed beyond the ship, demonstrated by the palmy merchandise of unrecorded weapons connected targets astatine Cape Wrath; weapons prepared by the ship’s company, loaded and delivered by 809 NAS and 617 Squadron engineers and pilots, controlled by Royal Marine Commandos connected the ground.’

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