The fact Great Britain is an island nation necessitates maintaining a strong navy that can project power in distant parts of the World, and aircraft carriers are the backbone of any force projection capability.

When the HMS Queen Elizabeth Class was commissioned in 2017, the Royal Navy did not have an aircraft carrier in its inventory for 3 years and did not conduct aircraft operations from its carriers for 11 years. The arrival of the HMS Queen Elisabeth and the HMS Prince of Wales was a jubilant moment for the Royal Navy after a long period of designing, planning, re-designating and re-planning, and construction was finally over along with what seemed like an unending political tug-of-war.