Captain of Royal Navy new aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales defends ship's £3.1bn price tag

Captain Darren Houston, commanding officer of HMS Prince of Wales, said the aircraft carrier would be critical to defending Britain’s interests across the globe.

The ship is the largest and most advanced of the two Queen Elizabeth-class supercarriers – which were built for a combined cost of £6.2bn and are both based in Portsmouth.

Speaking at an event in Liverpool, where Prince of Wales is on a week-long visit, Captain Houston hit back at critics and said costly carriers were still relevant.

Highlighting China’s aircraft carrier programme, Captain Houston said: ‘For those that say no, they are an outdated thing, I’d look very carefully why China has just built a second one and has another in service. We need to be able to react, and be on the world stage.’

The news comes as the commanding officer revealed when the first F-35 stealth jet would launch from the 65,000-tonne behemoth.

Navy top brass has earmarked January as the next major milestone in the warship’s history, when fixed-wing trials with the hi-tech warplane would begin, Capt Houston confirmed.

The trials will take place off the eastern coast of the USA, with a number of jets embarked on the £3.1bn carrier.

This is slightly later than the autumn date of her sister ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth’s opening bout of trials.

But before this, the ship will focus on completing tests with rotary wing aircraft, like the Merlin helicopter.

Captain Darren Houston told Naval Technology: ‘This year is really about generation of the ship itself, the internal aspects but also the external.

‘The first part is really making sure we are able to take helicopters and we build up the deck experience and also the pilots and the aircrew as well.

‘So we’ll have the Merlin helicopters a bit later on, but later on this year we will do some more work with them and then into the autumn we commence our basic sea training and that tests every aspect of the ship.’

Prince of Wales is expected to deploy on her first operational mission in 2023.

She is four metres longer and as much as three knots faster than her sister ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth.