The UK carrier strike group’s deployment on Operation ‘Firecrest’ in the North Atlantic and High North is demonstrating multinational integration, future capability, and enduring deterrence.
The UK’s HMS Prince of Wales carrier strike group (CSG) is deployed across the North Atlantic and High North region on Operation ‘Firecrest’, leading NATO deterrence presence against the Russian threat. The deployment comes amid a recent pattern of intensifying Russian grey zone activity.
The need for such deterrence presence was demonstrated visibly on 2 July 2026, when a Russian Tupolev Tu-142 ‘Bear Foxtrot’ maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) overflew the CSG at close quarters and deployed sonobuoys, even while being escorted by a pair of F-35B Lightning II fighter aircraft launched from the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales itself.
The Russian visit occurred as the carrier air wing was readying its F-35Bs for the culmination of the first ‘Firecrest’ phase – deploying aircraft to support NATO’s air policing mission, protecting Icelandic and Arctic airspace against Russian incursions, a UK Royal Navy (RN) news report noted on 7 July. This was the first time a CSG had contributed to the region’s air policing mission.
In late June 2026 off the Norwegian coast, as the CSG and its air wing prepared for this mission, Commodore Richard Hewitt, Commander UK Carrier Strike Group, explained to Warsight onboard Prince of Wales that a carrier strike capability delivering a fifth-generation aircraft (in the F-35) operated by both the UK from the CSG and regional partners including Norway is adding something new at national and NATO levels.
“The geography of this region is well understood … [but] the predominant area we’ve operated in over many years has been anti-submarine warfare [ASW]: now, carrier strike brings a different domain,” said Cdre Hewitt. “It is multi-domain by nature. By its fifth-generation capabilities, and with our partners who also have F-35s in the area, the CSG is allowing us to conduct activity we haven’t been able to do for many years.”
Across the two phases of ‘Firecrest’, the CSG will be working closely with allies in both the ‘NATO and JEF’ contexts, Cdre Hewitt explained. JEF – the UK-led, 10-country, Joint Expeditionary Force – is designed to build non-NATO, sub-conflict-threshold deterrence across the region. “[With] those partners, we see the same threat, we look through the same lens, we have the same vision … [in] how we will combat and deter together,” Cdre Hewitt said.
‘Firecrest’ is “the embodiment of deterrence”, Captain Ben Power, Prince of Wales’ commanding officer (CO), added. “This is the most advanced aircraft carrier operating the most advanced air wing afloat, using the poise and utility of maritime power – meaning we can go where we need to go, when we need to go there.”
“That is what this gives NATO, JEF, and the UK, from a sovereign perspective, in terms of deterring adversaries and showing strength,” Capt Power concluded.
In a NATO context, the CSG’s deterrent output is enhanced by its highly developed levels of multinational integration. Throughout the CSG’s recent history, aircraft, ships, and submarines from NATO partners have ‘chopped’ in and out, for short periods right up to full deployments on the CSG’s two Indo-Pacific missions (Operation ‘Fortis’/CSG21 in 2021, and Operation ‘Highmast’/CSG25 in 2025).
“The CSG now is a very well-established capability within the UK, and we are afforded the ability to integrate other countries. That’s been proven globally, with ‘Fortis’ and ‘Highmast’,” said Cdre Hewitt. “With NATO, I would argue it’s almost seamless. You can now bring those escorts and capabilities in and out at the time of choosing that allows the CSG to operate in different sizes at different times, depending on what you’re trying to achieve.”
The RN is also recapitalising its surface fleet, with Type 26s and Type 31s incoming to replace (respectively) the Type 23 ASW and general-purpose frigates, and with the Type 45 air-defence destroyers amid various upgrade programmes. So, should the UK’s capacity to provide sovereign surface ship capability for a CSG deployment ever be limited, NATO partners can step into the structure very easily. On ‘Firecrest’, for example, while Type 45 HMS Duncan is the ‘air defender’, the French Navy has deployed a destroyer and a frigate at different times into the CSG to respectively augment air defence and ASW capabilities.
Cdre Hewitt added that other NATO ships will come and go over the coming weeks. The CSG’s planning process has developed to such an extent over the last few years that NATO ships can ‘chop’ in with very little lead time required, he added.
“There will always be a sovereign core, but what is unique and what really helps NATO is, if you look at our adversaries, what they perhaps sometimes struggle with is [we’re] creating a response option that is on a bilateral, multilateral, or NATO basis,” Capt Power said. During NATO’s North Atlantic ASW exercise ‘Dynamic Mongoose’, nine or ten of the participating countries contributed to the CSG: “That is a really powerful convening authority that a CSG has,” the CO added.
On the carrier air wing side, in late June 2026 the CSG participated in an iteration of NATO’s ‘Ramstein Flag’ multi-domain airpower exercise, an activity that stretches across NATO’s area of responsibility (AOR). Here, the CSG provided a forward-deployed, fifth-generation air wing, integrated with aircraft from 18 other NATO countries, including other fifth-generation platforms. “That in itself is a deterrent,” said Cdre Hewitt.
The CSG’s ‘Firecrest’ air wing numbers around 20 aircraft onboard Prince of Wales, mixing both crewed and uncrewed platforms: the F-35Bs, plus Merlin Mk2 ASW and Wildcat HMA Mk2 multi-role helicopters, provide the crewed element; Malloy Aeronautics T-150B uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide the uncrewed component. Duncan is also embarking Wildcat and T-150B UAV flights.
“Our air wing is not just about F-35; it’s about integrating all those types in a manner that is suited to fighting in the North Atlantic and High North,” Captain Ed Philips, the CSG’s Commander Air Group (CAG), told Warsight, onboard the carrier. “Equally, that sort of group – a globally deployable capability – could go elsewhere in the world of the government’s choosing.”
Capt Philips explained that the air wing brings offensive and defensive capability across the range of airpower tasks, including air control, air mobility, attack, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), with the different aircraft types integrated across the delivery of these outputs. Integration with NATO partners is critical, too. “There’s enough flexibility within what we have, to be able to offer credible support to coalition efforts and in particular to the NATO alliance,” he added.
Harnessing this all in a CSG context, Capt Philips explained “What we bring is the ability to have a group that can move up to 500 [nautical] miles [926 km] a day and offer the government choice to act at the time and place of their choosing.”
For the F-35Bs, “The overarching task is to generate and demonstrate our operational capability in this region. That’s both through generating as well as proving resilience to do that,” Commander Nick Smith, CO 809 Naval Air Squadron, which provides the eight F-35Bs on board, added.
As a fifth-generation fighter and one of the most capable combat air platforms in Europe, the F-35B augments NATO’s deterrence output, Cdr Smith explained. “The key part, from a conceptual side, is that airpower delivers reach; by having the ability to go hundreds of miles away from the task group, you are able to influence potential aggressors and threats a lot further away than the task group can do by its positioning. That clearly is something any threat actors out there have to be very conscious of,” he said.
As within the CSG, where the carrier sits at the core of a wider group, the F-35B sits at the centre of the air wing. Capt Philips explained that the Queen Elizabeth-class ships were designed from the keel up to carry F-35Bs, and have the scale and versatility to be developed as the aircraft and air wing develops, too. He noted that F-35 is the only fifth-generation fighter currently operational amongst European NATO navies, and is central to how the RN will fight in and from the air going forward. “The fact that you have a ship designed for the aircraft and aircraft designed for the ship works really well, and gives us the cutting edge of offensive and defensive airpower at and from the sea,” Capt Philips said.
Capt Philips discussed the increasing seamlessness in integrating the air wing, including the F-35Bs, with NATO partners like Norway – which operates the land-based, conventional take-off F-35A variant – and the foundations this lays to underpin future NATO outputs. “The carrier air wing feeds into the broader joint and alliance campaign, and the ability to operate with Norway, one of our closest European partners[,] … is pretty smooth, by the very nature of the fact that we follow NATO standard procedures,” he said. “This allows us to integrate in a way that we need to do more of in the years ahead. I think that’s quite powerful.”
Amongst NATO allies, the US Marine Corps and the Italian Navy both operate F-35Bs and have embarked aircraft in the UK’s carriers on operations before. “The ships are designed for F-35s; it doesn’t necessarily matter whose country’s they are,” said Capt Philips. “Should the government require or should things change, we would be ready to embark and operate F-35Bs from other countries as needed.”
“For the F-35, the interoperability element is really important, because F-35 is quite a precious asset and it’s a really potent capability when we start plugging in other countries,” Cdr Smith said. For example, while Warsight was onboard Prince of Wales, three UK F-35Bs were launched to make up a mixed mission package with Norwegian F-35As; the net output, Cdr Smith explained, was “to effectively double our capability and what we could do … from locations that are hundreds of miles apart.” “We are all working to the same tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and we all speak the same tactical language …. So, we’re exercising those elements and proving we have that capability,” he added.
“The fact that we are now so interoperable and are training together on a weekly, if not daily, basis at times, further promotes the capability,” Cdr Smith continued.
F-35 integration levels have been further enhanced on ‘Firecrest’, with steps continuing to be taken within an ongoing process. “Each country will have its own policy for how it operates the aircraft. What we are working very hard behind the scenes to do is align those policies as much as possible, to enable that freedom to just ‘plug and play’ between countries, to do whichever tasks we want,” said Cdr Smith.
“Operating the aircraft together airborne? I would argue that is done, in terms of we train together, we’re all working from the same tactics manuals, and broadly speaking the aircraft are all talking to each other and sharing data exactly as the aircraft was designed to do,” he added.
The next steps in smoother-still integration relate to areas like servicing and sustaining the aircraft collectively on operations; these aspects were practiced and refined on ‘Firecrest’, Cdr Smith explained. During ‘Ramstein Flag’, four F-35Bs from Prince of Wales landed in Finland, where they were ‘hot-pitted’ (refuelled) in 30 minutes by Finnish and US military personnel, before flying several hundred miles deeper into the threat area.
“That is quite a capability,” Cdre Hewitt pointed out. Beyond this is developing the ability for the UK to land F-35Bs in Finland or Norway to conduct fault rectification and full servicing, using either national or shared spares pools.
These and other developments across ‘Firecrest’ demonstrate the continuing progress in CSG and air wing integration, and the deterrent impact this has – but illustrate too the enhanced impact to be generated through more regular, and integrated, carrier presence across NATO’s AOR.
A next development step in this process was the CSG’s participation in a carrier integration exercise during the third iteration of NATO’s ‘Neptune Strike’ (NEST 26-3) in early July 2026.
Run by Striking and Support Forces NATO (SFN) within US Sixth Fleet, NEST 26-3 was designed to demonstrate integrated carrier operations across the alliance’s AOR. Previous iterations have seen multiple US, UK, French, and Italian CSGs working together across this battlespace. The deterrent impact of such geographically broad but still-integrated presence is significant.
NEST 26-3 iteration saw numerous allied countries contributing aircraft (including strike fighters and MPAs) to air policing in the High North. With a focus on building more sustained presence, including through air-to-air refuelling, the outputs were designed to deter, for example, adversaries’ long-range surveillance missions. For the CSG, alongside providing F-35B presence, it conducted air traffic control of its surrounding airspace and supported P-8A Poseidon MPAs conducting ASW tasks.
The presence onboard Prince of Wales and in the CSG of T-150B UAVs is a strategic indicator of the direction of travel for the UK’s Carrier Strike concept.
With the UK continuing to invest in F-35Bs – for example, several of the ship’s aircraft were from one of the newest batch purchases – that capability will remain onboard for a long time to come. In parallel, the RN is shifting to a ‘hybrid’ force structure, with crewed and uncrewed platforms being integrated together across all domains and tasks.
The UK’s Carrier Strike concept offers an alternative to perhaps more traditional set-ups used by other NATO carrier forces such as the US and French navies. Those navies’ use of ‘cats and traps’ (launch catapults and landing arrestor gear) and angled flight deck designs are shaped around the operation of conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) aircraft, the use of which can restrict capacity to conduct other air operations concurrently from the flight deck. For the UK, its use of short take-off/vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft means the ships themselves, with a large, open flight deck space, can launch and recover crewed platforms while simultaneously conducting flying operations with UAVs. During ‘Firecrest’, the Prince of Wales had been doing just this, launching its F-35Bs, Merlins, and Wildcats from one part of the deck while deploying the T-150B UAVs on their logistics mission from another.
“[The RN is] going to go forward at pace with the concept of ‘hybrid navy’, and those autonomous platforms are going to only increase in their ability, their endurance, their complexity, their capability. The list is endless,” said Cdre Hewitt. Uncrewed systems’ presence may add to the complexity of the CSG’s integration task. However, he continued, “I only see the benefits of what it will add. That’s very much the future for Carrier Strike.”
Across the maritime domains, including in the air, the RN will develop a blend of crewed and uncrewed capabilities, Cdre Hewitt explained. However, some tasks common across these domains lend themselves to sustained uncrewed presence and capability.
“You can see already a place where ISR is, from an endurance perspective, entirely uncrewed,” said Cdre Hewitt. This reflects the argument that maritime uncrewed systems are ideally placed to support ‘dull, dirty, and dangerous’ tasks. Moreover, as demonstrated by the T-150B UAVs’ undertaking the logistics mission – another ‘dull’ task – and thus freeing up the Merlins and Wildcats for their specialist duties, various CSG assets and tasks can be supported by uncrewed systems.
Given the ship’s size and configuration “We’re really well poised to cope with what is a technological revolution that is only accelerating in pace,” said Capt Power. There is, he added, a pan-navy appetite to “embrace that pace of iteration” in uncrewed technologies, harnessing the technology as it arrives, integrating it, learning lessons, and then iterating it.
