Scuttling the Royal Navy?

Disturbing reports have been appearing in the press about the future of the Royal Navy. Various figures have been quoted that report a ‘halving’ in the strength of the fleet. Unnamed senior officers are quoted that the Navy will soon be ‘no better than a coastal defence force or a fleet of dug out canoes’.

Janes Fighting Ships reports a total of 44 major assets still remaining to the Royal Navy: four ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), nine nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs), three aircraft carriers, eight destroyers, seventeen frigates, two amphibious transport docks (LPDs) and one helicopter carrying amphibious transport (LPH). Of these, the carrier Invincible is at extended readiness, reducing the active surface fleet to thirty.It is not clear where the extra ship came from to increase Adam Ingram’s total back to 31, as announced in his recent answer to a parliamentary question. It might be RFA Mounts Bay, the new landing ship dock (LSD). This is the first of four, all due to be in commission by the end of the year and, as major combatant warships, likely to be transferred from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary to the Royal Navy. Of Mr Ingram’s 31 ships, thirteen were reported by the minister to be at sea and eighteen in port at 48 hours notice. These figures do not include submarines. The SSNs are still reducing to the eight announced in the 2004 white paper, a figure that will be reached in 2008-9 when Trafalgar and Superb decommission and Astute (hopefully) enters service. Of these boats up to five are usually at sea or rapidly available for service. This increases the active fleet to about thirty six plus at least two ballistic missile firers, to make a total of around 38.

The press reports refer to the placing in extended readiness of the two Type 42s, Exeter and Liverpool, due on current plans to go in 2009 and to be replaced by the first two Type 45 ‘Darings’, as well as the four large and capable final batch of Type 22s, for which a disposal date had not been announced and which have no planned replacement.

This would reduce the active fleet to about thirty units, a reduction in total units of just over 21 per cent, not a half, as claimed in some press reports. As far as the surface fleet is concerned, the reduction is 19 per cent, a figure that reduces to ten percent if the three new LSDs are taken into account.

This is not the end of the world, but the cuts are significant and highly undesirable. Destroyers and frigates (DD/FF) are the workhorses of the fleet and the basis of the United Kingdom’s global naval presence to which the government still aspires.

The Blair  government inherited 35 such ships; this was reduced to 32 in the Strategic Defence Review of 1998 and 25 in the 2004 cuts. Now the future number may be 19, a cut of almost a half from the 1997 figure.

The 2004 cuts forced the Royal Navy to abandon FF/DD commitments that had previously seemed sacrosanct, such as the guardship in the West Indies and a presence in both of NATO’s standing naval forces, a concept originated by the British.

The Royal Navy has been its usual creative self in working around such problems, using one of the new helicopter equipped large fleet tankers as a highly effective Caribbean ‘naval’ presence and one of the LPDs as command ship in the Gulf (a task that would previously have been carried out by a more normal surface warship, the lack of which had previously led to British commanders operating from American ships).  The proposed cuts can only make this situation worse. Indeed,  they will almost certainly force more cuts in deployed assets.

This seems less than wise in a context where ‘maritime security operations’ in the broadest sense are seen as being of growing importance. These include monitoring and interdicting uses of the sea by those who wish the West ill.

Good examples are the operations in the Mediterranean and off the Horn of Africa which have quietly and unobtrusively hindered the use of the sea by radical Islamists, little noticed by the press. They have probably had a significant counter terrorism effect — unlike Iraq.

Mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan involved the UK in land operations somewhat beyond the MoD’s planned capabilities. This means that the Army has a reasonable case for demanding a greater share of the defence budget — inevitably at the expense of the other services: hence the proposed naval cuts. Whether the overall British defence posture should be distorted by an ill conceived commitment in Iraq and an ill executed conflict in Afghanistan is another matter.

There are other problems that the Royal Navy faces in justifying its force structure. The first is the published logic of the 2004 cuts that as Britain will always be operating in a coalition, especially at the higher levels, there is no real bottom line to national ‘platform’ numbers. Continued cuts can therefore be justified down to almost any level.

The second is the future aircraft carrier (CVF) programme. This was the centrepiece of the SDR and it put maritime capabilities (in the best joint sense) at the centre of national defence policy. This reversal of the errors of the 1960s was more than welcome and naval policy-makers have been understandably willing, albeit reluctantly, to accept cuts elsewhere to safeguard CVF. Some argue that the Navy has been too defensive about a CVF programme that remains very attractive to the government for a range of reasons, not least the benefits to Scottish industry that provide strong support for the maintenance of the Union.  

The Frigate and Destroyer reductions are not the only cuts on the table. They also include two more mine countermeasures (MCM) vessels (reducing the force from 16 to 14, a reduction of over a third from 1997 figures), the last conventional landing ship logistic (LSL, the expensively refitted RFA Sir Bedivere), and the support tankers RFAs Oakleaf and Brambleleaf. On current plans, all these RFAs were to be retained until 2010-11.

Most importantly, there is a proposed cut that gives a considerable sense of deja vu: the Antarctic support ship Endurance. The questions raised by this proposal need no rehearsing in the 25th anniversary year of the Falklands conflict, in part provoked by the signals sent by the withdrawal of Endurance’s predecessor and namesake.

Its proposed withdrawal might be justified by the building of the new offshore patrol vessel HMS Clyde, due to take up Falklands patrol duties this year — but this replaces the older HMS Dumbarton Castle, and ignores the fact that Endurance has wider Antarctic commitments that Clyde cannot fulfil.

A combination of naval cuts, both in general and around the Falklands, seems particularly unwise in a context where a sudden change of our focus to the South Atlantic would require the abandonment of much of what the services are doing in other parts of the world — or have we abandoned national war fighting, one interpretation of the 2004 policy statement?

The UK’s naval capability is a key national security interest as well as status symbol. Britain, the archetypal island nation, cannot but be a maritime power.

The prospect is opening up, however, of Britain ceasing to be the major second rank navy. France is not so well placed as some people think. Her surface fleet is inflated by counting as real warships some not very capable assets, and her SSN fleet is distinctly inferior to ours, as is her planned carrier capability.

But the more the Royal Navy is eaten into, the greater will be the cries that the ‘sky is falling’ and France is taking up the mantle of European sea power. Someone might believe such critics, as they did in 1982.

The First Sea Lord has signalled to the Navy not to believe everything they read in the newspapers. The options under review are just that, options. Nevertheless, they should be strongly opposed. Nineteen British Frigates and Destroyers are not enough to maintain the naval presence that the British people, Britain’s allies and the world in general have every reason to expect.

Dr Eric Grove, Director, Centre for International Security and War Studies, University of Salford.