UK Set To Deploy Aircraft Carrier In The Red Sea In Response To Houthi Attacks

The Government's Armed Forces Minister has indicated that the UK could send an aircraft carrier to the Red Sea when the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – an American carrier currently present in the region – returns home.

The USS Eisenhower has been stationed in the Red Sea since the Houthis, a Shia-Islamist group linked to Hamas, started attacking ships in October.

The UK has issued land-based Royal Air Force typhoons in response, flying over 3,000 miles from Cyprus to attack Houthi targets in Yemen. However, the two British aircraft carriers currently in service – HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales – remain docked in Portsmouth.

“There's no real need for more carrier mass – for more carriers to be in the region than the Ike [the Eisenhower’s nickname] can provide. She's a very capable ship,” Armed Forces Minister James Heappey explained in a forthcoming interview with The House magazine. 

“So our judgment was that with the Ike on station – the Eisenhower on station – and with jets available from Akrotiri, that we were able to meet the challenge as it is now.

“That’s not to say that when the Eisenhower goes home, if we were needed to plug a gap in US deployments, or if the situation deteriorates and we need more, that we wouldn't [send a British carrier].”

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.”

The UK