Royal Navy’s new HMS Queen Elizabeth can be ‘DISABLED’ by CHEAP missiles, think tank warns

HMS Queen Elizabeth could be vulnerable to attack by missiles (EPA)

 

THE Royal Navy’s new £3billion aircraft carrier is “vulnerable to low-cost missiles”, a terrifying industry report has revealed.

The HMS Queen Elizabeth, which was built in various yards around the UK before being assembled in Fife, could be sunk by cheap missile readily available to regimes across the globe, according to a a paper by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

According to the institute, both China and Russia were already directing investment into such weaponry and have eroded the military dominance by the West.

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The report adds: “China and Russia appear to have focused many (but not all) their efforts on being able to put at risk the key Western assets that are large, few in number and expensive.”

Such weapons could also knock out satellite-based communications and positioning systems, the report states.

When the Queen Elizabeth was first commissioned in 2007, along with its twin, the Prince of Wales, the total budget estimate was £4.85billion.

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The RUSI report also questioned the effectiveness of both Trident, Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and its replacement.

It said: “The readiness of NATO to explicitly consider escalation to the nuclear level in the face of losses at the conventional level seems like a hangover from the Cold War and looks less appropriate and credible in the contemporary world.”

The Russian Defence Ministry said in a recent statement that HMS Elizabeth was “merely a large convenient naval target”.

It added: “It is in the interests of the British Royal Navy not to show off the ‘beauty’ of its aircraft carrier on the high seas any closer than a few hundred miles from its Russian ‘distant relative’.”

Full article: Royal Navy’s new HMS Queen Elizabeth can be ‘DISABLED’ by CHEAP missiles, think tank warns (Express)