Glorious pictures of HMS Prince of Wales as aircraft carrier at centre of huge multinational exercise

HMS Prince of Wales, the 932ft warship currently at the helm of the UK Carrier Strike Group, is at the centre of Exercise Bersama Lima. Marked as one of the centrepieces of the Operation Highmast deployment, the drills involve forces from Britain, Malaysia, Sinagpore, Australia and New Zealand.

Across a span of two weeks, personnel will be pushed to their limits during a series of drills testing air, land, and naval forces. Joint and combined operations will take place, with an emphasis on strategic co-ordination and real-time communication across multiple units.

All five nations are part of the Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA), an Indo-Pacific alliance dating back to 1971. The focus is on training military personnel to make sure they can co-ordinate operations together. This is to protect the region from threats of terrorism and cyber warfare, as well as natural disasters.

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Major Mohammad Irwan, Royal Malaysian Air Force Lead Exercise Planner, said: “It is a great honour for Malaysia to host this exercise and it gives us an opportunity to learn together with the other countries.”

Deputy Exercise Controller Wing Commander for the Royal Air Force (RAF), Mark Taylor, added: “The UK have pleasure of working with our FPDA partners in Malaysia whose lead it is this year, to build a programme of which Headquarters Integrated Area Defence is responsible for overseeing to make sure it is exciting, challenging and meets all of our training objectives from a national perspective.”

For the naval aspect of the exercise, HMS Prince of Wales is joined by HMS Richmond, the Royal Australian Navy frigate HMAS Ballarat, Royal Malaysian Navy ships KD Lekir and KD Sri Indera Sakti, Singaporean warship RSS Formidable, and Victory-class Missile Corvette. The RAF’s Air Mobility Force (AMF), A400M and Voyager aircrafts are also involved, carrying out advanced training with fifth generation aircraft.

Here are a selection of pictures from their recent PHOTEX.