High Mast, Low Draft: The UK’s Indo-Pacific Deployment

Towering above Singapore’s Marina Bay Cruise Centre, the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s largest surface warship, is on an eight-month deployment in the Indo-Pacific beginning in April 2025. At a time of geopolitical flux and intensifying Sino-US rivalry, the deployment is welcome but pressing domestic priorities in the UK and the need for greater clarity in its Indo-Pacific approach suggest that a rethink is in order.

In a show of multinational interest in the stability of the Indo-Pacific, OPERATION HIGH MAST, as the deployment is called, comprises ships and personnel from Canada, Norway, and Spain. The Carrier Strike Group 2025 (CSG25) deployment will be joined by warships from Australia, Japan, India, Malaysia, and Singapore. British officials stressed at a public event aboard the HMS Prince of Wales that London would implement its Indo-Pacific strategy “with” rather than “on” countries in the region.

To its credit, the UK has done well in reaching out to ASEAN and the broader Indo-Pacific. Since announcing its “Indo-Pacific tilt” in its 2021 Integrated Review under the previous Conservative government, the UK became a dialogue partner of ASEAN in the same year and has applied to join the ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus. The UK also became the first non-founding member to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2024.

While the deployment is welcome, it can be costly and complex. The last UK CSG deployment to the region in 2021 cost £74 million (US$98 million) in “additional operating costs”, far exceeding the typical costs of the personnel and other capabilities involved.

If the CSG deployment is to show support for freedom of navigation and serve as a deterrent to potential disruptors to the status quo, it lacks operational punch. While accompanied by a nuclear-powered Astute-class attack submarine, the F-35 fighters it carries lack standoff weapons and embarked air-to-air refuelling support. As two scholars argue, OPERATION HIGH MAST is an “unaffordable luxury” that might have only limited deterrent value against China. Smaller deployments to the region, similar to Germany’s two-ship transit through the Taiwan Strait in September last year, might yield the same deterrent effect and would allow for capital ships such as the HMS Prince of Wales to be deployed in areas of greater strategic value, such as the Euro-Atlantic.

There is also the issue of coordination between the UK and its European partners. About a dozen countries and international organisations have adopted Indo-Pacific strategies, including France, Germany, and smaller European states like Lithuania. Apart from the UK, other European powers too are sending carrier deployments to the region. Last year, for example, Italy deployed a CSG to the region, consisting of its Cavour aircraft carrier supported by a frigate. This year’s UK CSG was preceded by a French CSG that included the Charles de Gaulle carrier, three frigates and a nuclear-powered attack submarine.

However, European deployments in the Indo-Pacific are largely done under national auspices, making the European Union’s objective of establishing a regular and significant maritime presence in the region a difficult endeavour. For instance, Germany deployed its modern Baden-Württemberg frigate and a support ship to the region in 2024 but refused to fly the EU flag.

While the UK remains outside the bloc, it has been working closely with its EU partners, such as France and Italy, to sequence their deployments to the region although no schedule of carrier deployments to the Indo-Pacific has been presented beyond this year. Still, Europe’s preoccupation with Russia and the concomitant challenge of domestic priorities cast doubt on the endurance of such deployments in the long term.

It is an open secret that CSG deployments are also meant to send deterrent signals to powers that seek to disrupt them (read: China). Yet the UK has been less direct in confronting security challenges posed by China than have its European peers, such as France and Germany.

If the carrier strike group deployment is to show support for freedom of navigation and serve as a deterrent to potential disruptors to the status quo, it lacks operational punch.

For instance, the UK’s China Audit was buried in three paragraphs on page 39 of the National Security Strategy released in June 2025 and does not say anything particularly novel about China’s challenge to the regional order. Instead, it refers vaguely to China’s growing “global power”, which makes it “increasingly consequential” in tackling global challenges, while calling for an increase in the UK’s capabilities across its national security system to deal with Chinese espionage, interference in the UK’s internal affairs/democratic process, and the undermining of its economic security. This passing reference stands in stark contrast to France’s 2025 National Security Strategy, which explicitly called out China for its “essential” role in facilitating Russia’s war effort in Ukraine and its “growing assertiveness” in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

The difference in rhetoric is also matched by the approach to Indo-Pacific deployments. The French navy deploys twice a year to the disputed South China Sea and at least once a year in the Taiwan Strait – both deployments that will rile China. In contrast, Admiral Tony Radakin, the UK’s chief of defence staff, made it a point to reduce “any misunderstandings” about OPERATION HIGH MAST with his Chinese counterparts during a recent visit to China.

Some commentators note that the current Labour government’s less hawkish position on China, compared to its Conservative predecessor’s, marks a “capitulation” to Beijing in return for the trade and investment that the UK desperately needs to resuscitate its sluggish economy. Working with China to bag more trade and investment is not wrong; after all, France does likewise. However, Britain might need to take a leaf out of France’s playbook when it comes to addressing China’s disruption to the regional order. To become a power of significance in the region, a rethink is in order – that is, working closer with European powers and sending a stronger deterrent signal to Beijing.

2025/256