My view from the captain's chair aboard Britain's 65,000-ton leviathan facing down war-hungry Chinese despot: DAVID PATRIKARAKOS

Daily Mail​

19 hours ago

When it comes to expressions of British military pride, nothing does the job quite like the HMS Prince of Wales.
The flight deck of the aircraft carrier that is the flagship of the Royal Navy stretches out before me. A vast slab of grey steel more than 900ft long.
From my vantage point near the stern I can see a line of F-35 fighter jet noses fan out like a row of arrows ready to pierce the sky.
These supersonic, stealth combat aircraft, renowned for their 'short take-off and vertical landing' capabilities, accelerate to 170mph as they head for the elevated runway ramp that juts off the end of the carrier to generate sufficient lift to begin their climb.
Once airborne, they can take out targets on land or sea using an array of firepower that includes Sidewinder missiles for air-to-air combat and 100kg Spear bombs for ground attacks.
These masters of the air are housed on a 65,000-ton leviathan that carries a 1,600-strong crew. And today, I'm one of them.
I'm aboard the Prince of Wales in the port of Darwin, northern Australia, having flown from London to meet Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Defence Secretary John Healey on the vessel.
Lammy and Healey are here because the carrier strike group – the Prince of Wales and its escort vessels – along with 3,000 British troops, are taking part in Exercise Talisman Sabre.
With more than 35,000 military personnel from 19 nations involved in the manoeuvres, it's the largest military exercise ever hosted by Australia. For the UK and our cousins Down Under, Talisman Sabre symbolises a deepening military partnership, designed for a world more dangerous and terrifying than for more than 80 years.
The day begins with an inspection of the troops. In the background, a band strikes up a military tune. Lammy and Healey make their way down a row of sailors dressed in white ceremonial uniform, making small talk.
Australia's Northern Territory is in the grip of a 30C heatwave made the more uncomfortable by 65 per cent humidity. Perspiration crosses my forehead. My eyes sting. My shirt becomes sticky.
'It's hot, isn't it?' Lammy says to one sailor, who's also struggling. Later, the three of us meet inside the hangar. 'The UK's Modern Industrial Strategy: Defence', reads a sign behind us.
Healey makes clear how important today's proceedings are. 'It's the first time a British aircraft carrier has come to Australia since 1997,' he says.
'And it's a big day because of the global context. Where threats are increasing, allies are important, and reinforcing the deep alliance that we've had with Australia is more vital than ever.'
Lammy agrees: 'I spend a lot of time on the Europe-North America relationship, particularly within the context of Nato, and here in the Indo-Pacific – it's a critical theatre. With Australia, we have had the deepest of enduring relationships. We're here to renew that relationship.'
Lammy is right about the Indo-Pacific. If there is to be a major global war in the years ahead, the region will be a key battlefield.
China is already challenging the US for global hegemony and this means, first and foremost, dominating what it believes is its 'backyard'. Many believe that Chinese leader Xi Jinping will launch his much-vaunted invasion of Taiwan in 2027 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
If that happens, the US is committed (albeit ambiguously) to Taiwan's defence. The UK and Australia will almost certainly follow suit.
Neither Lammy nor Healey will comment on any possible war with China. But being in a state of readiness in this region is now clearly top of Britain's agenda.
And when I speak to a senior government source, the message is clear. Britain ' challenges' China. It will continue to confront Beijing's dangerous and destabilising activity in the South China Sea: 'From the Red Sea to the South China Sea — the high seas are more dangerous than at any point in generations.'
The truth of these words is plain to see. Earlier this year, the Chinese navy conducted live-fire naval exercises in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, in the first recorded operational engagement in the area. The People's Republic tested new landing barges on ships that would be used in any amphibious assault on Taiwan, as well as cable cutters that could cut off the island's internet.
It has been ratcheting up drills in the Taiwan Strait and targeting countries with which it has territorial disputes, such as the Philippines and Japan.
Only yesterday, the Daily Mail reported how two Chinese vessels collided in the South China Sea while chasing a Philippine patrol boat at high speeds – just the latest in an increasing number of incidents between the two countries.
The Australians have no choice but to be at the top of their game.
All of which explains the urgency and importance of cementing the Western alliance in these waters.
Once, Britain was at the heart of Australian security. But after the Second World War, the Aussies knew we were spent. In 1951 they signed the ANZUS Treaty with the United States, cutting Britain out of Australian defence – and leaving Churchill heartbroken.
But our historic alliance has now been revived, most significantly via the 2021 trilateral AUKUS agreement, under which Britain and the US agreed to share nuclear propulsion technology with Australia with a view to cooperating on the design and build of a new generation of nuclear-powered submarines. This was the first time that America and Britain had shared such sensitive technology with anyone else.
'Today, the UK and Australia are two nations intertwined by shared goals, particularly in the Indo-Pacific,' a Foreign Office source told me. 'That means a level of integration unprecedented since the end of the British Empire.'
But modern defence means reckoning with new technology that enables Davids to attack Goliaths. I have been deeply wary of Britain spending colossal sums on huge carriers that could be vulnerable to the sort of drone tech that, as I have seen first-hand in Ukraine, enabled Kyiv to destroy Russia's Black Sea fleet without any real navy of their own. It even took out Moscow's colossal flagship, the Moskva, near Odesa.
And let's not forget, the Houthis of Yemen, backed by the mullahs of Tehran, have succeeded in terrorising Western cargo ships passing through the Red Sea using a range of cheap drones.
Yet Healey assures me that the military fully understands these challenges. 'We learned from Ukraine how the accelerating development of technology is changing the nature of warfare,' he tells me.
'For your war fighters to have an edge in the future, you've got to harness the power of that new tech, and we are. The aircraft carrier is increasingly hybrid, with traditional fixed-wing aircraft taking their place alongside the latest in drone technology, just as the Strategic Defence Review said it should.'
The proof of this is all around me. It's there as I sit in the captain's chair, surrounded byan array of winking interfaces, feeling as if I'm piloting the Starship Enterprise.
But most of all, it's in the ship's hanger where I see the drones. Black circles amid a grey patina on the front of one make it resemble a human face. It almost seems to stare at me. Another drone resembles a small plane.
Nearby are a couple of small D40s, Australian drones that can be launched manually or via a grenade-launcher. These so-called 'loitering' munitions buzz and swarm like lethal metallic wasps until they lock on to their target - and unload.
It's clear that the British goal is to further develop capabilities that are now key to the future of war: detecting and striking adversaries autonomously.
But does all this mean that the target of 5 per cent defence spending, demanded by both Donald Trump and Nato will, finally, be met?
Healey cannot be clearer: 'Will we hit that target?' he replies. 'I'm absolutely confident we will. We signed up like the other 31 nations last month to that 5 per cent by 2035.'
Healey is a serious man. But Britain, as we all know, is already facing financial disaster, and cannot possibly afford to put 5 per cent of GDP into defence without eye-watering sacrifices. And even if we somehow found the necessary cash, to hit the target only in a decade seems lethargic – at best. The threats we face are terrifying and imminent.
Not least because Lammy correctly stresses the broader importance of this region in a global conflict. 'We see an indivisibility of security between the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic,' he tells me. 'I have seen Iranian missiles shot into Kyiv. I've been in Beijing and challenged the Chinese about their dual-use technology [which can be used for both weapons and civilian purposes] that is shipped to Russia and fired at the Ukrainians.
'I've seen satellite images of DPRK [North Korean] troops engaged in battle on behalf of Russia against Ukraine, and of course we know that shells are making their way to Russia also from the Indo-Pacific. So the indivisibility is plain to see on a day-to-day basis.'
This is spot on – as I know first-hand from my reporting across several continents. I've come under attack from Iranian technology in Kyiv, eastern Ukraine and Israel. I've seen up close the damage the Iranians have done in Baghdad and what the Russians have done in Syria.
We are in the midst of a battle with an axis of enemies whose influence spans the globe. That is why the HMS Prince of Wales's presence here is so important.
In a speech to the Washington think-tank The Hudson Institute last year, Lammy quoted former US National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who warned that the West might one day face the danger of a 'grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran, an anti-hegemonic coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances'.
'This I think risks coming upon us,' Lammy said.
Well, that day has indeed arrived. And our response must be decisive and bold.
We must build a coalition of allies as resolute as the states ranged against us and it must straddle both the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic.
Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia — all these democracies want us there. The more alliances they have, the more strategic independence they maintain.
Lammy points not just to Nato but the 'Indo-Pacific Four' (IP4), the alliance of Nato partners in the region – Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
He highlights the intelligence-sharing 'Five Eyes' group of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US and, of course, the G7 group of developed western nations.
'Our economic and military alliances are so multilateral. Yes, this is a time of peace through strength,' he says. 'But also peace through deepening our allied partnerships with one another.'
What I saw in Darwin was merely the latest iteration of something Britain has been doing for centuries: creating and managing alliances. When we fought with our Empire in the Second World War, we sat at the centre of a web of allies.
It's how we defeated not only Hitler, but the German Kaiser in 1918 and before that, Napoleon.
Yes, it's been a long time since Britannia ruled the waves.
But we still have global soft power, highly trained armed forces and vast geopolitical and military experience.
If the world is more dangerous than ever, hyper-accelerating technology is ensuring that it's also smaller than ever. To deal with it, alliances must be global – and no one forges them better than we do.
The HMS Prince of Wales is more than just a floating airbase and potent weapon. It is a movable hub: both the centre and the symbol of the type of global alliances that Britain will need in order to survive and thrive in the coming decades.
'This is what you're seeing. Allies. Arming-up. Ambition. This is our strategy for the 21st century,' says my senior government source.
As I walk off the ship, slowly crossing the bridge connecting it to terra firma, I recall Lammy's words about the indivisible theatre of conflict we now face.
The threat is indeed global – and at its head is China. Only it has the size, strength and resources to reorder the world in its totalitarian image.
In 1962, former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson notoriously observed that 'Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.'
In Darwin, perhaps I finally saw us taking on that role, and not before time.
In this age of mass conflict, our future depends upon it.