Queen Elizabeth-Class Aircraft Carrier

The Queen Elizabeth class comprises two aircraft carriers of the British Royal Navy, HMS Queen Elizabeth commissioned in December 2017 and HMS Prince of Wales commissioned in December 2019, the largest warships the Royal Navy has ever operated and among the largest carriers in the world outside the United States Navy. Displacing around 80,000 tonnes fully loaded and built around an unusual dual-island design that separates ship navigation from flight-deck control in two smaller superstructures rather than one large one, the carriers launch F-35B Lightning short-takeoff jets from a ski-jump ramp rather than catapults, and can embark up to about forty aircraft in normal operations or as many as seventy-two at surge capacity. Designed for roughly fifty years of service, the class replaced the smaller Invincible-class carriers and restored the Royal Navy's fixed-wing carrier aviation capability after a gap of several years following the earlier carriers' retirement.