Reports noted that after nearly 15 years of efforts, the UK Royal Navy (RN) has been successful in conceptualising and defining two new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers with rejuvenated strike capabilities. The carriers – HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, will have a displacement of 65,500 tonnes, measure over 260 meters from stem to stem, having 8 internal decks with more than 2,500 separate compartments, and a flight-deck area of about 1.6 ha. The carrier will handle F-35B Lightening II variant of Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), selected as the RN’s Joint Combat Aircraft (JCA). The carrier will be capable of embarking an air wing of up to 30 JCA’s plus a range of rotocraft. The carrier has also been designed to meet the requirements of embarking up to three generations of aircrafts over a life span of 50 years, including new genre of unmanned combat air vehicles under development1.

• 1. “Two of kind: Pragmatism drives UK carrier construction scheme,” August 13, 2009, at http://www.janes.com/news/defence/idr/idr090813_1_n.shtml