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In focus – composition, aims and future of UK carrier strike

17th February 2021 - 12:30 GMT | by Richard Thomas in London

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Deployment of the UK’s Carrier Strike Group (CSG) to the Indo-Pacific in a few months is intended to be its defining military operation of the year, during which its armed forces are likely to face cuts amid a significant downturn in spending.

When HMS Queen Elizabeth departs the UK later this year to begin the deployment of the country’s renewed carrier strike capability to the Indo-Pacific region, it is worth remembering that a decade will have passed since the decommissioning of HMS Ark Royal in 2011 and the sudden gapping of fixed-wing carrier aviation.

That the capability gap has managed to be filled at all is testament to a multitude of efforts behind the scenes in the MoD, RN and industry. External factors too will have played a role in convincing the UK that it needed to be able to perform naval

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