Huge crowds of locals, plus families and friends of the crew, greeted the return home of the nation’s flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, last week. It was a fitting climax to a flawless, highly significant, eight-month, 40,000-nautical-mile deployment to the Far East. Sailors spoke about the emotion of their homecoming, pride in their hard work, and their desire for shore leave.

In November, the Ministry of Defence announced that Britain’s carrier strike capability had reached Full Operating Capability (FOC). This means we will have one carrier always available for operations with 24 advanced F-35 stealth jets embarked. The UK is alone in having its carrier committed to Nato at short notice. But Full does not mean Final.

It has taken almost 30 years to get to this point; Labour’s Strategic Defence Review recommended acquisition of two new aircraft carriers and next-generation jets in 1998. Decades of political indecision, real-term defence cuts, cost growth, construction delays, defect rectification, and, in the case of the jets, ‘short-termism, complacency and miscalculation’ followed. This delayed FOC by years. 

It left the carriers at repeated risk of being scrapped, to the joy........

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