HMRAS Kaigani (CV-24)

HMRAS Kaigani is the Royal Navy of Albion's sole operational aircraft carrier and the current flagship of the Alban fleet. She is the largest naval ship operated by any Commonwealth nation and the first supercarrier to be operated by Albion.

Initially commissioned by the United States in 1957 as USS Ranger (CV-61), the ship was acquired by Albion in 1994 as part of a sweeping legacy project to build a next-generation naval flagship. Her rebuilding was deeply consequential for Alban politics in the 1990s. Since re-entering service, Kaigani has served in numerous international conflicts and relief efforts on behalf of Albion.

Procurement
Albion's investment in Kaigani stemmed from discussions begun in 1989 concerning the replacement of HMRAS Princess Royal, the ex-USS Oriskany, in frontline service. The Liberal government of Mark Longfield planned to decommission her by 1993 without replacement as part of Longfield's proposed military force reductions, together with the cancellation of the already-controversial Akutan submarine program. These reductions were critical to the defeat of Longfield's government in 1992, though the ensuing Labour minority government deferred plans to replace Princess Royal.

Ranger exited US Navy service in 1993 following budget cuts put into place in 1992 by US President Lincoln Alexander. The incoming administration of Robert Rae, seeking to make up a budgetary shortfall offered to sell the ship to Albion at a discounted rate, sparking a debate in Parliament as to whether Albion could afford to operate such a massive ship. Ranger would require at least 1,000 more crew than the 2,800 serving aboard Princess Royal, and her immense size would translate to significant operating costs. While new Labour Prime Minister Isaiah Hunter did not reject the offer, it languished "under Ministry of Defence cost benefit analysis" through 1994.

Following Hunter's automobile accident injury and subsequent resignation, Peterborough-area MP James Glen succeeded him as Prime Minister. Glen, part of Labour's centre-left moderate wing, sought to shore up Labour's shipbuilding union support and parry Liberal criticism that he was a "little wimp" by investing in the military. The government announced that their analysis found that Ranger could be operated within Albion's budget following a complete overhaul.

The 1994 election was fought heavily on the issue of the Ranger procurement. Longfield had run contrary to his own party's instincts in his earlier bid to reduce the size of the military, and new Grit leader Dick Kemperman's more interventionist viewpoint left him struggling to delineate a position distinct from Glen's, left mainly to decry the ship as a vote boat. Labour received the endorsement of the Alban business and labour establishment, the strongest coming from the primary shipbuilding union, the Alban Shipbuilding Workers. The arrival of Ranger to drydock at Kitsap Navy Yard was a major media event. Ultimately Glen won the 1994 election with a majority, and work ensued to refurbish the ship.

Project 24
The effort to refit and recommission Ranger was known on paper as the Comprehensive Aircraft Carrier Refitting Plan, but received the byname of Project 24, after the carrier's anticipated ID code, CV-24.

The Glen government committed to ensuring that union labour would be utilized for the project and the private sector would be invited to take part. The contract for refurbishing the ship went to Kitsap Marine in partnership with several subcontractors in multiple sectors of the economy, creating what the Glen government referred to as a "national project." The overall effort contributed to creating thousands of direct and spinoff jobs and pumping more than a billion dollars into the economy.

Among the key subcontractors were several major Alban corporations.


 * General Electric Albion undertook the removal of the ship's eight Babcock & Wilcox steam boilers and converted the ship to run on six General Electric LM6000 gas turbines. The total horsepower of the ship increased from 280,000 to 324,000 shp.
 * Aecon Group Inc. contributed significant prefabricated material components and construction design work and project management, replacing much of the ship's most worn-out physical infrastructure.
 * Switzer Steel provided most of the high-grade steel utilized to replace aging hull elements.
 * A joint venture between Microsoft Albion and Granville-based machine-to-machine electronic communications firm Sierra M2M oversaw the removal of the carrier's computer systems and their replacement by all-new infrastructure. The new Navsoft 24 program featured significant mechanization and digitization systems, automating numerous routine processes and cutting the ship's overall crew complement to 2,800.

Additional refinements included the replacement of Ranger's C-7 catapult with a more powerful C-13 model, similar to that employed by the Kitty Hawk-class supercarriers and integrated with Navsoft 24; the removal of older American radars and their replacement by familiar Commonwealth versions; and the refurbishment of the weapons systems to add compatibility with the RIM-116 and RIM-7 missiles for defense.

The refit was completed in 1998, but her recommissioning was held off until just before the 1998 federal election. The vessel was launched in a grand ceremony headed by Glen. The ship was rechristened HMRAS Kaigani, for the Indigenous name of Prince of Wales Island, overlooking the Dixon Entrance.

Corruption scandal
The refit of Kaigani was expected to cost approximately $1 billion, but reports emerged of cost overruns on the order of 20% of program costs. These overruns, coupled with changes to the funding of social services, contributed to the loss of Labour's majority in 1998 and built momentum for the establishment of the McCall Commission investigation into alleged procurement improprieties on the part of the government.

The commission's report in 1999 identified Project 24 as a source of government misspending and financial corruption. While part of the cost overrun was legitimately attributable to the unforeseen need to replace structural components previously thought sound, at least $5 million was found to have been directed to contractors, subcontractors and unions only tangentially tied to the Kaigani refurbishment, with much of this money either going to promotional efforts on behalf of Labour or being partially donated back to the Labour Party.

The ensuing corruption scandal dominated the 1999 election, in which Labour was reduced to a third party. Project 24 underwent significant scrutiny for years afterward, but the completed Kaigani had already entered her final sea trials and was placed into service by the Liberal government of Eugene Woloshyn.

Service
In 2001, Kaigani embarked on a sweeping world tour. The ship joined her newly-assembled battle group, consisting of the destroyers HMRAS Wakashan and Aleutian, the frigates Granville, Augusta and Clowhom, the supply ship Protector and the newly-launched nuclear submarine Akutan, and departed Esquimalt en route around the world. The so-called Alban World Cruise saw the fleet meet up with a US Navy fleet at Pearl Harbour and a joint Australia-New Zealand fleet in the Indian Ocean before stopping in India and passing through the Suez Canal and through the Mediterranean to the North Sea. On passage through the Atlantic, Kaigani sailed alongside the American carrier USS George C. Marshall, the British carrier HMS Invincible and the newly-commissioned French carrier Richelieu in a rare four-carrier international formation. The tour brought prestige to the Royal Navy of Albion and highlighted Albion's position as a rising naval power, increasing national pride within Albion tremendously and restoring the honour of a carrier maligned by the public as a vote boat associated with the Labour procurement scandal.

In 2003, Kaigani and her battle group deployed to the South Atlantic as part of the international task force involved in the Angola War. Aircraft of the Naval Air Arm struck strategic targets in socialist-controlled Angola and supported air superiority patrol missions as part of the broader effort to destroy the Soviet-supplied Angolan Air Force. During the conflict, an Angolan Su-22 Fitter attempted to approach Kaigani and attack with two Kh-29 missiles. These were destroyed in flight by defensive fire from HMRAS Clowhom, and the Su-22 was shot down by an AF/A-18 Hornet piloted by Lieutenant Tessa Day of 905 Naval Air Squadron.

Kaigani was the primary platform for Albion's involvement in Operation Persistent Vision in 2012. Operating from the Bight of Benin, Kaigani embarked the Naval Air Arm and an additional squadron of AF-14 Tomcats to support the United Nations coalition in Mali. AF-18s and AF-14s flying from Kaigani struck numerous targets in Azawad and contributed to breaking the occupation of Timbuktu by Tuareg extremists.

In 2013, aircraft flying from Kaigani and the US Navy carrier USS Alexander Mackenzie landed on each other's decks during a meeting of the two carriers off Hawaii. The event was intended to symbolically illustrate the military and diplomatic ties between the United States and Albion.

In 2015, Kaigani supported Operation Juniper Bough, operating off the coast of Mauretania and servicing Allied aircraft striking Ansar Dine targets in the Sahara. She acted as the fleet flagship for this operation, embarking several French and West German aircraft.

Kaigani and HMRAS Illahee formed the backbone of a relief task force sent to Sulawesi in 2008 following a massive earthquake and tsunami. The ship's typical fighter loadout was largely replaced by a helicopter force operating from the deck in an interim capacity, delivering food and medical supplies to areas hit hardest by the natural diaster.

Kaigani entered drydock at Kitsap Navy Yard in 2015 for a thorough mid-life refit. This upgrade replaced aging components, added new automated systems in the engine room and rebuilt the ship's radar systems, adding the Thales SMART-L system and associated mid-range radars.

Proposed replacement
As of 2020, Kaigani has racked up approximately 58 years of service, 36 with the United States and 22 with Albion, interrupted by a four-year refit. While the ship has run at relatively efficient operating costs for a vessel of her displacement, the Royal Navy of Albion has flagged the need to replace her by 2027.

The administration of Anthony Handler compiled a report in 2013 to identify potential replacements for Kaigani. The report identified no viable carriers of suitable displacement or vintage on the reuse market, while casting doubt on the possibility of procuring a decommissioned Nimitz-class carrier upon the expected decommissioning of the first such vessel in 2022. The decommissioning process for a nuclear carrier requires significant damage to the structure of the ship to remove the reactor, making a restoration project non-viable.

The government commissioned Kitsap Marine to develop a conceptual design for an indigenous Alban carrier design, dubbed Project 25. The proposed design envisioned a carrier of 80,000 long tons at full load, utilizing modern technologies and powered by the pressurized-water nuclear reactors utilized by the Akutan-class submarines and by ACGS Randall Pearkes.

Upon the defeat of the Handler government in the 2016 federal election, the Labour government of Prime Minister Rachael Neel Shergold declined to order the Project 25 design, citing the exorbitant cost of procuring a carrier from the keel up. Media reports suggested the government's decision was influenced by a fear of comparisons to the Glen government of the 1990s and by a desire to avoid the electoral blowout Labour suffered as a result of the botched Kaigani procurement. The Department of Defense was reported to be exploring the feasibility of procuring a CATOBAR version of the Royal Navy's Queen Elizabeth-class fleet carrier, but the design is smaller in displacement than Kaigani.

In 2019, an internal Department of Defence report cautioned that a decision on a replacement would have to be made by the end of 2022 in order to avoid a "carrier gap" in service.

A decision was finalized in late March 2021, when the government announced the purchase of the newly-completed HMS Prince of Wales from the United Kingdom. She is anticipated to enter full service by 2025 as HMRAS Kitlineq.