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Thousands of well-wishers waved off the Royal Navy's flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth as it set sail for exercises and its first operational deployment to the Far East. The £3billion aircraft carrier - nicknamed 'Big Lizzie' - sailed out of Portsmouth Harbour in Hampshire to cheers from the crowds who filled the walls and the beaches. There were few signs of social distancing among those who brandished Union Flags and held banners saying farewell to their loved ones who will be at sea for about seven months.

What a crazy week it has been for the F-35 program and the F-35B in particular. In the space of just a few days, the type racked up its first U.S. combat mission, its first operations aboard the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, and its first total loss crash and pilot ejection. It was definitely a mixed bag, but as I noted to readers on Friday, the F-35 program can only be incredibly proud of its safety record. Sure there have been plenty of close calls, but going through nearly 12 years of tortured developmental and operational...

HMS Queen Elizabeth has arrived back in Portsmouth following successful First of Class rotary wing trials in the Atlantic. Royal Navy Photo LONDON – Earlier this month, Britain’s national security adviser declared that the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers would be unlikely to ever deploy on high-end combat missions without support from friendly forces. The two new flattops would “inevitably be used in a context of allied operations of some kind, if used in a contested environment”, Mark Sedwill told the House of Commons’ Defence Committee on May 1. The London press suggested that the U.K. government would be...

Britain's new £6.2billion aircraft carriers are vulnerable to relatively cheap long-range Russian and Chinese missiles, a report has revealed. Multibillion-pound defence projects are at risk from technological advances by potential enemies of the UK, the think-tank study found. Missiles costing less than £500,000 each could 'at least disable' Britain's new £3.1billion HMS Queen Elizabeth, it claimed. The report noted: 'Key Western military assets had become vulnerable to targeting and disruption and destruction by long-range precision missiles to a degree that had hitherto been unthinkable.' It warns the Government has focused more on offensive systems over protective capabilities. 'There has been...

The £3.1billion HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier proudly hit the waters earlier this week - but currently its crew only has replica planes to practise with. Life-size models of the F-35 Lightning II jets have dubbed the 'faux fighters' and will be pushed around the tarmac at Cornwall's RNAS Culdrose, so flight deck teams can get a feel for the world's most advanced warplanes. The real jets will be deployed on the 65,000-tonne Queen Elizabeth - dubbed 'Big Lizzie' - was put into the sea for the first time in Scotland. Life-size copies of the F-35 Lightning II jets will...

Fears were raised last night that Britain's new aircraft carrier could be vulnerable to a cyber-attack after it emerged the ship was still using the outdated computer software used by the NHS. Navy chiefs boasted the defence system on the UK's biggest ever warship, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be NASA standard - rather than like the NHS system that was hacked into several months ago. But computers in the flying control room on the £3.1billion state-of-the-art carrier showed the system was still running on Windows XP. The vast majority of NHS computers hit by a global cyber-attack in May...

The largest warship ever built in the UK is due to set sail for the first time today. HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier, will leave her dock in Scotland around lunchtime to start two years of sea trials. She is named after Elizabeth the first and is the second ship to carry the name - the first was a World War One battleship. More than 700 crew are onboard, from seamen to aircraft engineers, dentists to force protection. The oldest crew member is 58 and the youngest 17 although the average age is in the early...

The Navy's delayed new aircraft carrier is facing a morale crisis, it has been claimed, as sailors 'abandon ship' because they are bored. In the last few weeks, around 21 sailors have quit aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth - the largest and most powerful warship ever built for the Royal Navy - amid claims morale has dropped "to an all-time low". A "continuous line" of personnel are reportedly resigning from the £3.1 billion ship - which has not yet begun sea trials originally planned for the spring - because of "dull" conditions onboard. Around 21 sailors are reported to have...

When HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s largest warship, enters Portsmouth harbour later this year, millions of pounds and man hours will have been spent ensuring absolutely nothing has been left to chance. From dredging a channel deep enough to allow the first of the Royal Navy’s 65,000-tonne Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers to enter port, to planning emergency drills for crew on board, or maintaining sophisticated technology – everything will have been meticulously planned. By summer, a team from Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Portsmouth and BAE Systems working in support of the naval base commander – will have spent a year...

Each day and night some 5,000 men and women pour into the docks at Rosyth to work on the two giant aircraft carriers that in the next three years will become the pride of the Navy’s fleet. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are the biggest warships ever built in this country, and will be the cutting edge of the Royal Navy’s capability, giving it the second biggest carrier force in the world. The carriers don’t come cheap — £6.3 billion for the ships alone — and don’t come without controversy, both political and military. Construction work is...

The next phase of work on the Navy's largest ever warship is underway, with the upper decks of the huge vessel gradually taking form. Workers were seen on board HMS Queen Elizabeth in Rosyth Dock in Fife, some seven months after being first floated on the River Forth. She was unveiled by the Queen in 2014 after the ordinarily dry dock was flooded with water. The ship is Britain's largest ever maritime vessel weighing 65,000 tonnes and measuring 918ft from bow to stern. At almost 230ft, she stands as tall as Niagara Falls from the keel to the masthead. Once...

Britannia rules the waves: Inside brand new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth that boasts 33-ton propellers twice the size of a double decker bus and a four acre deck HMS Queen Elizabeth is Britain's biggest engineering project Two 33-ton propellers are twice the height of a double decker bus The carrier will finally take to the water next month when the Queen visits Standing on the bridge of the mighty HMS Queen Elizabeth, it is the sheer scale of the largest warship in Royal Navy history that hits you. This hi-tech batcave commands a view that runs for miles from...

circa 1915: Cat on a cannon The mascot cat of HMS Queen Elizabeth on a 15-inch barrel