Who would win in a fight – the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth or Putin’s flagship Admiral Kuznetsov?
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the Russian President would be 'jealous' of our new ship - but is he right?
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THE £3 billion HMS Queen Elizabeth is designed to send a "powerful message to the world", commander Captain Jerry Kyd said as it began sea trials last week.
But does it make the UK look like a tough nation capable of projecting its strength across the world, or a weedy has-been that wouldn't have a hope of winning a sea battle?
British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has suggested that Vladimir Putin must be jealous of the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier.
Sir Michael had said Russian vessels would be looking at the massive 65,000-tonne warship “with a little bit of envy”.
But Russian officials fired back, saying that the British ship is a "large, convenient target” and that Russia’s aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is much more powerful.
The Russian defence ministry went on to slam Sir Michael’s "rapturous statements about the supremacy of the new aircraft carrier's beautiful exterior over the Russian aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov expose Fallon's utter ignorance of naval military science".
So who’s right?
We compared the vital statistics of these two flagships to decide which would win in a fight.
Size
“Big Lizzie”, as the Queen Elizabeth is called by her crew, is a clear winner here.
At 65,000 tonnes she’s much bigger than the 55,000 tonne Kuznetsov.
That said, the Russian ship is actually longer.
Engines
The Kuznetsov has old-fashioned steam engines which are known to be highly unreliable.
The Russian carrier emits thick clouds of black smoke and at times she has had to be escorted by a large tugboat to tow her when she breaks down.
You’d think this sort of thing couldn’t happen in the Royal Navy, but actually our latest ships - the Type 45 destroyers - have terrible engine troubles and often break down completely, losing all power.
A partial fix is in hand which will involve cutting open the ships’ hulls and installing new generators at huge cost.
This will not stop the main engines breaking down, but it will mean that at least the destroyers don’t lose all electrical power and black out completely when it happens.
Ominously, the Queen Elizabeth has a very similar engine set-up to the Type 45s.
If they haven’t done a better job this time, we won’t have much scope to laugh at the Kuznetsov’s engine problems.
Weapons
The Kuznetsov bristles with weaponry.
She can carry 12 massive “Shipwreck” missiles, each as long as a London bus and capable of delivering almost a tonne of explosives - or a nuke - to targets 350 miles away.
The Russian ship also has heavy anti-submarine rockets and a huge array of defensive guns and missiles.
It’s important to remember that a lot of this kit is likely to be unserviceable or simply not there - reportedly the Shipwrecks were removed long ago, though the Russians deny this.
At least theoretically however, the Kuznetsov packs a lot of firepower.
The Queen Elizabeth is almost entirely unarmed, with just a few guns for emergency defence.
Her aircraft are supposed to fight for her.
Radar
Radar can’t detect things below the horizon, which means that attacking missiles or planes can get dangerously close to a ship before they appear on its radar screens.
The answer is to send up a radar aircraft.
Being high in the sky, it can detect even low-flying enemies hundreds of miles off.
When attacking planes or missiles come in, fighters can be directed to intercept them far away.
The Royal Navy learned this the hard way in the Falklands, where we had no radar aircraft and our Sea Harrier fighters could only intercept Argentine attackers if they were lucky.
Proper US and French carriers have dedicated radar planes, but the Queen Elizabeth can’t use those because she doesn’t have any catapults.
Instead of planes, the Lizzie will have to make do with a second-rate solution: Merlin helicopters with a “Crowsnest” radar kit attached.
It’s better than nothing, but a radar aircraft should fly high and stay up for a long time. Helicopters aren’t much good at either of those.
The Kuznetsov also has to use helicopters for radar.
Russian Ka-31 radar choppers might not be as good as our Crowsnest will be, but the Royal Navy doesn’t have much to crow about here.
Combat aircraft
The Kuznetsov can carry as many as 40 aircraft, though normally only 20-odd would be combat jets.
These are powerful warplanes, either older Su-33s or more modern Mig-29s.
Jets from the Kuznetsov carried out more than 400 missions over Syria during her recent cruise in the Mediterranean.
The Queen Elizabeth has room for around 40 aircraft too and theoretically, as many as 36 could be combat jets.
But the ship’s lack of catapults, and the scrapping of our existing Harrier jump jets in 2010 means that the only plane which can fly from our carrier is the new “Lightning II” jump jet.
The F-35B beats the Russian Mig-29K in some areas: for instance, it has stealth capabilities.
On the other hand, its vertical-thrust machinery means that it lacks range and can’t carry a lot of weaponry.
Another major snag with the F-35B is that it can’t make a normal vertical landing without dumping its expensive missiles into the sea beforehand, so the Royal Navy plans to develop a special “rolling vertical landing” technique.
Some people don’t think this will work - Falklands Harrier ace Sharkey Ward says it will only be feasible in flat calm conditions.
So there’s some risk that we’ll never get proper jets no matter how long we wait.
The biggest objection to F-35Bs, however, is that we haven’t got any.
Conclusion
Right now, the Russians are right: the Kuznetsov would certainly win in a fight.
In theory, the Royal Navy will have some operational jets from next year and it might be possible to put 12 on the Queen Elizabeth as soon as 2020.
In reality it will probably be a very long time before we have as much air power at sea as the Russians, as we’re planning to borrow planes and pilots from the US Marines for the foreseeable future.
All in all, then, the Russian bluster is much too close to the truth for comfort.
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Lewis Page is a former Royal Navy officer. He wrote the book “” and is working on a sequel.