Future
The Sea Harrier was officially retired on 1 April 2006. The principal weapon of the Invincible-class carriers then became the Harrier GR9 flown by two Fleet Air Arm and two RAF squadrons until they were retired in 2010. Since then they have only operated helicopters.
Invincible was decommissioned in July 2005, and was mothballed until September 2010. She was put up for sale in November 2010. In early February 2011 it was announced that she had been sold to a Turkish scrapyard, Leyal Ship Recycling; Leyal has been involved in the scrapping of various Royal Navy ships, including HMS Cardiff, HMS Newcastle, HMS Glasgow and RFA Oakleaf. Invincible left Portsmouth under tow for scrapping on 24 March 2011.
Ark Royal took over as the flagship, was planned to be decommissioned in 2016, but retired in 2010 following the Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Illustrious remains the only one of the class in service but will also retire once HMS Ocean comes out of its next refit in 2014.
Two much larger Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers are being built, and are expected to enter service in 2016 and 2018 under present plans. They are expected to displace around 65,000 tonnes each - more than three times the displacement of the Invincible class.
Read more about this topic: Invincible Class Aircraft Carrier
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“One merit in Carlyle, let the subject be what it may, is the freedom of prospect he allows, the entire absence of cant and dogma. He removes many cartloads of rubbish, and leaves open a broad highway. His writings are all unfenced on the side of the future and the possible. Though he does but inadvertently direct our eyes to the open heavens, nevertheless he lets us wander broadly underneath, and shows them to us reflected in innumerable pools and lakes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)