Britain appears set to send an aircraft carrier to the Red Sea to counter the threat of Iran-backed militias.
Armed Forces minister James Heappey said either the HMS Queen Elizabeth or the HMS Prince of Wales could replace the USS Dwight D Eisenhower when it returns to the US.
Mohamed al-Atifi, the commander of the Houthi forces, said the group was prepared for a long conflict over the Red Sea, where it has launched dozens of drone and missile attacks against commercial and naval ships since November.
Mr Heappey told The House magazine: “The Eisenhower can’t stay there forever, and so there’s a thing about just maintaining a carrier presence in the region where we might cooperate with the Americans to provide a capability there.”
He said Royal Navy carriers could be used “when the Eisenhower goes home… if we were needed to plug a gap in US deployments”.
Heappey suggested that the departure of the US aircraft carrier could be imminent.
He said: “I’ve given you a whopping great clue in my previous answer. The fact is the Eisenhower can’t stay there forever. And so there’s a thing about just maintaining a carrier presence in the region where we might cooperate with the Americans to provide a capability there.”
Many military experts have criticised the Ministry of Defence for not deploying an aircraft carrier to the region sooner.
Sarah Atherton, the Conservative MP for Wrexham who sits on the Defence Committee, added that: “The issue we have is: why is the carrier or one of the carriers not out there?
“Because the carrier can offer 360 instant response and has power projection – this is exactly what the carrier was designed for. Instead, what we’re seeing is sortie machines from Cyprus for the Typhoon and two Voyager refuelers going out on a 3,200 mile round trip.”
If an aircraft carrier were to be deployed, she would join HMS Diamond.
The British Type-45 destroyer shot down a barrage of drones and missiles in “the largest attack on a Royal Navy warship in decades.”
The vessel destroyed seven of the 21 Iranian-manufactured weapons. The other 14 were shot down by American fighter jets from the USS Dwight D Eisenhower aircraft carrier, which is part of an international response to the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.
Heappey suggested that he believed it was likely that the departure of the US aircraft carrier could be imminent, and did not rule out the possibility of it being replaced with alternative UK resource.
“I’ve given you a whopping great clue in my previous answer. The fact is the Eisenhower can’t stay there forever. And so there’s a thing about just maintaining a carrier presence in the region where we might cooperate with the Americans to provide a capability there.”
