HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of the UK’s two state of the art aircraft carriers, is due to steam out of Portsmouth naval base on Sunday to become the naval centrepiece of one of Nato’s biggest military exercises since the end of the cold war.
The flagship is expected to be escorted by at least one British frigate. But after years of budget cuts the once-powerful Royal Navy will need its allies to provide many of the additional vessels needed to form a carrier strike group — in particular a key logistics ship.
In one of the latest signs of Britain’s struggles to remain a top-tier military power, the 34-year-old RFA Fort Victoria, which is the last so-called solid support ship left in the fleet, remains laid up for repairs, despite a recent refit.
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