Would the Royal Navy have been better off getting a Class like the Trieste LHD?
The Royal Navy may have been better served by procuring a class of ships closer in concept to the Trieste rather than committing over £7.6 billion to the two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier carriers.
The Queen Elizabeth class are undeniably impressive ships, but they arguably represent an overreach relative to what the Royal Navy can realistically man, escort, maintain, and fully equip. Each carrier requires a core crew of around 679 personnel before even accounting for the air wing, while the limited size of the fleet means availability will always be constrained. With only two hulls, one ship in maintenance or refit has a major impact on operational readiness.
The broader issue is whether these ships truly match the Royal Navy’s likely requirements and financial realities. Britain has consistently struggled to maintain sufficient escort numbers, crew availability, and carrier air wing capacity to fully exploit the potential of two large fleet carriers. At the same time, the Royal Navy is now seeking to replace or rebuild amphibious capabilities that were effectively reduced during the carrier-focused era, despite ongoing budgetary and manpower pressures.
By comparison, the Trieste concept appears far more aligned with the scale and resources of the modern Royal Navy. Reportedly costing around €1.2 billion, even without the economies of scale that would come from building multiple ships, vessels of this type could potentially have allowed the UK to procure four or even five hulls for a similar overall cost. With a core crew of roughly 460, they would also place far less strain on personnel.
While not directly comparable to a fleet carrier, ships of this type offer significant flexibility. They can operate helicopters, support amphibious operations, embark F-35Bs in a light carrier role, and provide humanitarian or expeditionary capabilities from a single platform. In effect, they combine functions that the Royal Navy is now trying to fund separately.
A larger number of smaller aviation-capable ships would also improve availability and resilience. Instead of concentrating capability into two extremely high-value assets, the Royal Navy could potentially sustain multiple deployments simultaneously while reducing strategic risk if one vessel were unavailable or damaged.
Critics will rightly argue that an LHD cannot replicate the strike capacity or global power projection of a true fleet carrier. That is true. However, the question is not whether the Queen Elizabeth class are superior warships in absolute terms, but whether they are the optimal ships for the Royal Navy’s actual budget, manpower base, and strategic needs.
In a conflict similar to the Falklands War, deploying two or three aviation-capable amphibious ships with embarked F-35Bs, helicopters, and Royal Marines may ultimately prove more practical and sustainable than relying on a single large carrier supported by increasingly stretched amphibious and escort forces.
The Queen Elizabeth class give Britain a capability associated with major naval powers, but the more important question is whether they came at the cost of building a fleet that can support them on operations, that is balanced and that is sustainable.