HMS Queen Elizabeth: is Britain even close to being ready for war?

With Iran-backed rebel forces now causing mayhem in the region, not least the Houthis whose relentless attacks on free trade shipping lanes threatens supply chains around the world, it is a moment of concern for world leaders.

During the course of the weekend, British and United States armed forces sent a third wave of military interventions the way of Houthi targets, striking, we are told, 30 strategic targets, doing critical damage to the capabilities of these terror groups.

With senior British military leaders like General Sir Patrick Sanders suggesting that such is the volatility of the shifting sands of geopolitics, now is a good time for we as a nation to contemplate how we might defend these shores in the event of all-out war.

Right down at the grass roots level, he said, that means building fighting capability at an individual level in what he described as a citizen army.

All of this at the same time that our multi-billion-pound warship HMS Queen Elizabeth, the navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, has broken down in dock – and cannot now join a NATO exercise – with a propellor fault.

It perhaps wouldn’t be quite so embarrassing for Britain had what now appears to be an entirely similar fault not scuppered HMS Prince of Wales back in August 2022, when it set off with gusto on a diplomatic mission to the US, and ended up on the hard shoulder of the English Channel with its hazard lights on, just off the Isle of Wight.

So the question for all of us now is this: in the event that war comes to these shores, is the nation equipped – literally, mentally and physically?