Feb. 9, 2018─The Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth arrives in Gibraltar for her first overseas port visit. The 65,000-ton future flagship was conducting a routine logistics stop having left her home in Portsmouth a week earlier for helicopter trials. (Photo Credit: Dave Jenkins, InfoGibraltar, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)

New landing aids for jets and helicopters are being installed on HMS Queen Elizabeth during a 13-week capability insertion period before the vessel makes an inaugural transatlantic voyage, including a visit to New York City, in September. The ship, the newest in the British navy, is being outfitted with communication systems including an azimuth antenna and elevation antenna that will aid in transmission of flight path information, a flight deck lighting array, fixed-wing landing aids and an instrument carrier landing system.

The ship is also receiving maintenance on its thermal coating, installation of additional cables, a galley update and three Phalanx weapons systems. The updates being carried out on the south coast of England at the Portsmouth naval base. In February, the ship conducted 450 deck landings with helicopters and aircraft as well as amphibious warfare trials with simulated air assaults, according to a report in U.S. Naval Institute News. Read more of the report at USNI.

See detailed pictures of the ship and read Kieran Corcoran’s play-by-play account in Business Insider for a tour of the Portsmouth naval base and HMS Queen Elizabeth, from the ship’s first sea trials in late 2017, through its commissioning earlier this year and into the installations currently underway.