The shrinking Royal Navy

[Ohmisterporter]

For the defence fans on here you may find this article of interest. David Axe is an American military blogger who writes the War is boring blogsite.  He recently wrote this article for Reuters about the current state of the RN from an American perspective. It is sobering to realise just how weak our navy has become, not just in hull numbers but in personnel, now down to 29,000 which is partly why skilled manpower has to be recruited to help out from such as the US Coast Guard. Nine month deployments are not popular with married crewmen and their families but with no slack in the system I don't see how it can be avoided in the near future. When, not if, the whatsit hits the fan the Navy will get the blame, not the politicians who are the real culprits.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uk-military-navy-commentary-idUSKCN10L1AD

[Brinkly]

A very interesting, yet very worrying, article. I have a couple of friends in the service and they have said that the Royal Navy is becoming less of a 'true blue water' fleet by the day. Ships put in extended readiness, really would take weeks to re-fit, as large parts have been stripped and not replaced. It really is a very poor situation we find ourselves in.

 

Franky I would rather pay higher taxes and have an armed force that is able to do what we need it to do, rather than slip away from the global stage altogether. I am an interventionist at heart, I believe we (Britain) still has a very important global role to pay. Even if all that is, is a humanitarian role. I appreciate we cannot help everybody, but I do think our Royal Navy and greater Armed Forces play a hugely important global role, something we seem to be stepping away from.

 

Regards,

 

Nick

[Mark Saunders]

It reminds me of 1982 pre Falklands and the Defence cuts!

 

Mark Saunders 

[Bon Accord]

The RN ceased being a true blue water fleet some years ago.

The workhorses of the fleet are the destroyers and frigates, for which neither cash nor manpower is available.

Yet the politicos will gleefully write blank cheques for the vanity project that is Trident replacement and the white elephants that will be the carriers, however they won't actually spend the cash on buying appropriate quantities of aircraft for the latter and those aircraft that will arrive will have to be shared with the RAF.

If you want to join the Carrier club you need the battlegroup and support ships that go with them - neither colour of government have taken any notice of that requirement. The result being that we have an unbalanced fleet that in the coming years will become even more unbalanced and which will be incapable of doing very much for very long.

Manpower wise lets not forget that only a few years ago they were still making people redundant. I had a Signaller on my ship who was given a redundancy date 12 days short of qualifying for his half pension. He asked for an extension as otherwise he faced losing out on a lot of money, it was refused of course.  I think he went on the sick in the end in an attempt to make up the days. His situation was far from unique and the choice of dates were of course no accident. At the time of the redundancies the Navy was already short of men and of course still is, yet under instructions from the Treasury thousands were shown the door for ridiculous (very) short term savings. Morale in the service has been in freefall for some time and it is unlikely to get any better.

We will never return to having a large, multi capability navy. Britain needs to realise that we are not the power we once were and we never will be again, only once that hefty dose of reality is acknowledged by those in charge (never going to happen) can we have a sensible long term RN strategy which will reflect the requirements of our commitments and responsibilities. At the moment the RN achieves neither of these things because it is desperately underfunded and under resourced with billions of much needed funds being diverted to projects which serve no practical purpose.

[Brinkly]

The RN ceased being a true blue water fleet some years ago.

The workhorses of the fleet are the destroyers and frigates, for which neither cash nor manpower is available.

Yet the politicos will gleefully write blank cheques for the vanity project that is Trident replacement and the white elephants that will be the carriers, however they won't actually spend the cash on buying appropriate quantities of aircraft for the latter and those aircraft that will arrive will have to be shared with the RAF.

If you want to join the Carrier club you need the battlegroup and support ships that go with them - neither colour of government have taken any notice of that requirement. The result being that we have an unbalanced fleet that in the coming years will become even more unbalanced and which will be incapable of doing very much for very long.

Manpower wise lets not forget that only a few years ago they were still making people redundant. I had a Signaller on my ship who was given a redundancy date 12 days short of qualifying for his half pension. He asked for an extension as otherwise he faced losing out on a lot of money, it was refused of course.  I think he went on the sick in the end in an attempt to make up the days. His situation was far from unique and the choice of dates were of course no accident. At the time of the redundancies the Navy was already short of men and of course still is, yet under instructions from the Treasury thousands were shown the door for ridiculous (very) short term savings. Morale in the service has been in freefall for some time and it is unlikely to get any better.

We will never return to having a large, multi capability navy. Britain needs to realise that we are not the power we once were and we never will be again, only once that hefty dose of reality is acknowledged by those in charge (never going to happen) can we have a sensible long term RN strategy which will reflect the requirements of our commitments and responsibilities. At the moment the RN achieves neither of these things because it is desperately underfunded and under resourced with billions of much needed funds being diverted to projects which serve no practical purpose.

 

I couldn't agree more with you.

 

I have felt, for a while, that we need a 'core' workhorse fleet of Frigates, to deal with patrols and escort duties, coupled with anti-piracy operations and battle flotilla - at least half again of the current number. With larger frigates and destroyers to act as the 'task force' to escort the carriers.

 

If we spent our money more wisely as a country, and perhaps looked at far more 'joint' naval building projects with other Western Nations, we could have a more cost effective fleet, lowering design and build costs. It is such a shame that the Australians looked to Spain to build there two new assault ships. Our dock yards could easily have built such a project.

 

We should be able to co-operate with other nations on sensible joint projects.

 

Kind regards,

 

Nick.

[skipepsi]

It will be 40 years in September that I joined the Royal Navy IIRC it was 70,000 men women and children strong. The Ark Royal was still going just, Hermes was a second class carrier and Eagle was still anchored in Plymouth. We had carriers for RM and amphibious landing ships. We were still trained on steam equipment even though it was on it's way out as the biggest ships were scrapped. I couldn't tell you how many smaller ships we had I know at the time of the Queen's review of the fleet in 1977 they stretched across the horizon at Portsmouth. I never did finish my training ( too bolshy) and was a seasick sailor at best but there was plenty to be proud of.

 

The turning point for the RN was I think the decision that their budget would pay for the trident equipped subs so the treasury didn't have to account for it separately. The rapid decline of numbers followed the reduced funds as night follows day. Too much was thrown away in the rush to balance the books and privatise dockyards etc. To me the actions of the MOD across all services was totally counter productive there used to be service families granddad was in the Royal Navy and his son and grandson followed ad infinitum. Not anymore all there is now is a legacy of bitterness, years of unblemished service severed early to save on pensions. Or was it to provide bonus payments for the MOD civil servants? Someone said years ago that our forces had a similar strength and size to Israel their MOD was 4,000 strong ours was 40,000 I don't know if we even equal Israel's strength anymore, but I am sure we have an admiral for every vessel. In the same way we have an excess of top brass for the army and airforce.    

[pete_mcfarlane]

Whilst the RN has problems and could do with more escorts than it currently has, parts of that article seem a bit dubious. It claims that the UK did nothing against Islamic State due to a lack of carriers, when the reality is that the RAF is bombing them from Cyprus. The UK wouldn't bother deploying a (fixed wing) carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean even if we currently had one. 

 

And 'many of Britain’s newest ships are remarkably light' seems to try and take the latest ship order (patrol boats) as being part of a wider pattern, rather than an order for some patrol boats. The stuff about the F-35B orders is wrong as well - presenting the initial order for 48 as being all that the country is going to buy. 

 

And lastly, the author doesn't seem to offer any real solutions beyond laming politicians for not spending as much money on the Navy as they'd like.

[Paragon]

If I may (I'll keep it brief)

Two friends in the Senior Service (one on T45s as an engineer the other commissioned in the RFA on Mounts Bay last I heard of her) for legitimacy

Last surface battle was what, 60+ years ago?

Falklands highlighted a serious lack of anti air defenses, and battle management.

Last conflicts since had negligible use of naval power in anything beyond 'force projection' (Balkans, First Gulf, TELIC (second gulf) and HERRICK (Afghanistan) except keeping the Iranians away from the tankers.

The Cold War was largely ASW forces bolstered by what was the last gasps of Coastal Command in the Nimrods

Nowadays the RUSI and Janes studies would depict an interim force of Anti Air destroyers bolstering a pair of hunter killer subs in the North Sea and more in the Atlantic if we tangled with say the Russians breaking out of the Baltic

Otherwise it's Force Projection, i.e. Mobilising the RFA 'Mounts' class and protecting HMS Ocean and her Wildcats ferrying stores ashore for an amphibious battle group of Commandos. This is fulfilled by the T45s and existing frigates. The only real 'Blue Water' defences are the Sabres in Gib fending off the Spanish trawlers and Guardia gunboats and the Falklands Defence Ship but again, the Argentinian fleet is still minus a battleship and would suffer to put a fleet to sea themselves.

Even the Germans are a Submarine heavy navy, the Americans are bullish with the Chinese and Russians about surface power, but tight themselves relying on AEGIS missile cruisers and Tomahawk Hazard Perry class destroyers and smaller frigates.

Nowadays, most nations focus on an aerial battle space supremacy approach alongside a submarine spearhead force to put down a hypothetical enemy's fleet, which negates a strong surface presence. Hence the defence requirements for Astute H/Ks and Type 45s. What would be interesting would be to see the next gen frigates, which I imagine will be ASW/ Air defence same but smaller as the Daring classes.

The question is, where is and who is the next enemy, and what do they bring to the battlefield? China is checked by the Anericans and South Korea and Japan, Russia by the Americans except in the Black Sea which is Turkey's playing field and the Baltic has Germany, Denmark, France and us, all largely coastal fleets/ subs and air power.

The real question here shouldn't be bemoaning the lack of a 'fleet' per se, that is inevitable with the current and previous threat assessments and conflict experience and expectations, what really should be the question is 'where are we with regards the Fleet Air Arm, no Nimrods, how good are the Rivet Joints at finding subs (they can't!) and why did we buy those over the new Poseidons the Americans are rolling out to replace the P-3s

As I once told RAF Marham's station commander who agreed entirely with my view when asked on the subject of modern armed forces, the army goes as far as the land, the navy as far as the seas but the air forces cover all of them!

Fly Navy!

Paragon.

Edited August 13, 2016 by Paragon

[Legend]

This country doesn't believe in defence anymore . Sure we like to deploy forces when we need them but sre not prepared to pay for them meantime . When decisions on Trident are based around how many jobs they will preserve or create rather than strategic importance you know the country has lost the plot.

 

It's a sad but accurate article . Too few frigates and destroyers ( that appear to break down too often) all under armed . How would our Navy take out an enemy warship ? 4.5 inch popgun. It's a joke . This country needs to wake up

[Paragon]

Don't forget that for every ship on the surface you see steaming around all pink gins and popguns , there's an awfully large amount of Subs bristling with torpedoes to put a few holes in the officers mess at drinks time!

I forgot to add that the carriers are a wasteful shame if they were that much of a difference maker in this day and age then the Ark wouldn't have been retired leaving a capability gap of what, 10+ years?

We need more 'Jacky' Fisher's and, dare I say, daringly outspoken First Sea Lord's stalking around Whitehall.

Paragon

(With a mighty wink to the silent service!)

Edited August 13, 2016 by Paragon

[The Stationmaster]

Alas the true picture is even worse - loads of men are putting their tickets in to leave so there are shortages of skilled engineering staff especially Leading Hands let alone POs and above.  The ship situation is even worse - one major vessel currently in refit is expected to be a minimum of 'several months' late coming out of dockyard hands despite the ship she should replace needing docking for a propulsion problem.  It is rumoured that the entire Class 45 fleet is now in port due to their power supply problems ... and so on  ....

 

The latest Govt idea appears to be to select from various design proposals what will emerge (maybe?) as the Type 31 which is effectively a cheaper, and therefore less capable, alternative to the Type 26 in order to allow the number of Type 26 hulls to be reduced.

 

As far as task is concerned in reality it is little different from what it has long been plus various additions.  Much of our fuel is imported by sea along with foodstuffs and other goods so the safety of that traffic needs to be secured, mine warfare remains a major risk with it being hardly a  difficult task fora  potential enemy to mine our limited number of deepwater ports using either submarines or aircraft.  So too important ASW roles straight away plus mine detection and clearance and convoy escort.   And that is before our relatively well provided amphibious warfare/'force projection' part of the Navy has to be provided with its own ASW and AA cover let alone dealing with any potential surface threat.  And the aircraft carriers will also need escorts.  Simple fact is the RN hardly the has the capacity in terms of number of hulls and manpower to cover any one of those multifarious tasks.

[Wheatley]

how good are the Rivet Joints at finding subs, and why did we buy those over the new Poseidons the Americans are rolling out to replace the P-3s

Not very I expect, it's a SIGINT platform. It replaces the Nimrod R1 not the MR2/MRA4 MPA which is why we are (eventually) buying Poseidens. Can't disagree with the rest of your argument though.

[Paragon]

That's my bad, thanks for the correction I should have spotted the lack of a MAD boom on the Airseekers!

The confusion is due to the fact it replaced an operational capability fulfilled by Nimrod, and it is of course a different airframe and sensor package in itself.

Duly noted

Paragon

[Bon Accord]

Don't forget that for every ship on the surface you see steaming around all pink gins and popguns , there's an awfully large amount of Subs bristling with torpedoes to put a few holes in the officers mess at drinks time!

I forgot to add that the carriers are a wasteful shame if they were that much of a difference maker in this day and age then the Ark wouldn't have been retired leaving a capability gap of what, 10+ years?

We need more 'Jacky' Fisher's and, dare I say, daringly outspoken First Sea Lord's stalking around Whitehall.

Paragon

(With a mighty wink to the silent service!)

 

There's only going to be seven Astute class, even then there will maybe only be 3 or 4 available at any one time due to extended readiness/refit/working up. That's also presuming you can find enough men to crew them - a big issue at the moment. As good as the Astute might be, like the T45s (which have a multitude of their own problems) they can't be in two places at once.

Latterly the Harriers were of course in a combined force with the RN, a timeshare agreement if you like. When the news went out that cuts were required, the RAF didn't make too much noise about the combined Harrier force (and thus the Ark) being ditched because it meant their Tornado fleet was protected and gave them a useful bargaining chip in ensuring continued Typhoon and latterly F35 orders. Plus importantly it got one over on the FAA, whose mere existence they loathe. To put that in some kind of context, the money saved in removing ARK ROYAL and her Harriers from service early (£105 million - that's from Hansard) didn't even pay for a single Typhoon with the spares package (£126 million).

[Dava]

What the article conveniently misses, written from a US-centric position, is that a major part of the UK naval problem will be the evergrowing billions of $ we will be paying to the US for the F35 aircraft and the missile systems for the Trident replacement subs. Note effects of recent fall in the GBP against $ on defence costs.

 

On the subject of Trident, whether the replacement is justified or will be an obsolete Cold War anachronism, why is it impossible to progress its productivity from 25% availability of 1\4 boats to 33% of 1\3 boats in the third generation of this technology? As remarked above, crew availability will be the defining factor. Trident seems politically untouchable, yet funding it pauperizes the conventional Navy we really do need.

 

Dava

[skipepsi]

Personally I suspect post Brexit Trident and Hinkley point are two things we as a nation cannot afford any more but the elected members set the priorities. 

[Southernman46]

How would our Navy take out an enemy warship ? 4.5 inch popgun. It's a joke . This country needs to wake up

With a large relatively inexpensive ship or air-launched missile - was already happening in the Falklands 30+ years ago.

 

The gun is there for a bit of coastal assault support or "persuading" smugglers / pirates and others of that ilk to "heave-to"

 

As the Captain of HMS Bedford said "Ok, we'll have to do this the old fashioned way".

 

IMHO I think we don't have enough of or the right mix of ships though - it all seems to go back to the cancellation of the carrier programme that the likes of HMS Bristol was designed to escort - this was the RN's "TSR-2" moment - but then I'm no naval strategist either.

Edited August 14, 2016 by Southernman46

[The Stationmaster]

With a large relatively inexpensive ship or air-launched missile - was already happening in the Falklands 30+ years ago.

 

The gun is there for a bit of coastal assault support or "persuading" smugglers / pirates and others of that ilk to "heave-to"

 

As the Captain of HMS Bedford said "Ok, we'll have to do this the old fashioned way".

 

IMHO I think we don't have enough of or the right mix of ships though - it all seems to go back to the cancellation of the carrier programme that the likes of HMS Bristol was designed to escort - this was the RN's "TSR-2" moment - but then I'm no naval strategist either.

 

The gun is there mainly for coastal gunfire support but can of course be used for other purposes.  Generally the smaller calibre weapons are used for 'junk bashing' as it used to be known.

 

The cancellation of CVA-01 and the aftermath of it did a lot to harm the future of the RN in my view although I'm not entirely sure about the level of 'bangs per buck' the Type 82 (HMS Bristol) offered as it was a very large hull for what it was reputedly capable of.

Edited August 14, 2016 by The Stationmaster

[Wheatley]

How would our Navy take out an enemy warship ? 4.5 inch popgun. It's a joke . This country needs to wake up

4.5" is about the same calibre as the army's 105mm gun except the shell goes a lot further. As Southernman suggests, Google "Naval Gunfire Support".

[skipepsi]

4.5" is about the same calibre as the army's 105mm gun except the shell goes a lot further. As Southernman suggests, Google "Naval Gunfire Support".

HMS Iowa has a nice sound to it. HMS Vanguard would have worked but it was scrapped of course. 

[Ohmisterporter]

There is more about the manpower crisis in the Save the Royal Navy blog, along with several other interesting articles.

 

http://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/the-hidden-crisis-royal-navy-manpower/

[Bon Accord]

With a large relatively inexpensive ship or air-launched missile - was already happening in the Falklands 30+ years ago.

 

The gun is there for a bit of coastal assault support or "persuading" smugglers / pirates and others of that ilk to "heave-to"

 

 

That was conventional thinking pre Falklands, hence some Leanders and Type 22s being missile only. However, that conflict showed up the inherent weakness in relying on missiles which do of course require all manner of electronic wizardry to make them work, the vulnerability of which will always be their crippling weakness, particularly at short range/against "difficult" targets/amongst challenging terrain.

The beauty of a gun is that despite all the modern electrical bits - and the current 4/5" is a very clever piece of kit - at the basic level it's still very simple point and shoot technology which works.

When first delivered the type 45s had no anti-ship offensive capability except for the helicopter and gun. The premature decommissioning of the T22 batch 3 released 4 sets of Harpoon anti-ship missile systems to go into the general pool (which is shared between T23 and T45) which allowed some of the T45s to be so fitted, but still not all are.

At long last the RN is moving towards commonality with many other nations in selecting the 5" gun for the new type 26 (if it ever appears), although until recently a lot of work went into trying to adapt the 155mm (6.1 inch) gun used by the Army on their AS90 SPG for use on the type 45s, although it was binned on cost grounds.

[Legend]

4.5" is about the same calibre as the army's 105mm gun except the shell goes a lot further. As Southernman suggests, Google "Naval Gunfire Support".

So faced with Russian cruisers heading straight for you , bristling with anti ship missiles , probably able to deploy them 100 miles out we are going to take the wraps off the pop gun trust in our goalkeeper anti missile defence(if it's fitted and working) to keep us safe and steam to within range of a 4.5 inch or 105mm gun. Now I'm not a naval strategist , but I can see several flaws in this argument.

 

What is our anti ship weaponry? Astutes( again if there are any around, which seems unlikely) have spearfish torpedoes but what else have we got that could disable or take out an interloper. Has the RAF got anything?

 

We do need a strategic defence review. Not one headed by the treasury , but one that identifies threats and has systems to counter it's we've got £1 billion warships that have anti air armament but not much else , that sometimes breakdown because of lack of power plant. Can that actually be in any way cost efficient? And of course , more importantly, there could be a cost in lives

Edited August 14, 2016 by Legend

[pete_mcfarlane]

So faced with Russian cruisers heading straight for you , bristling with anti ship missiles....

Given the supposed state of the Russian armed forces, it wouldn't surprise me if the ship was bristling with empty missile launch tubes rather than actual missiles. 

[Wheatley]

So faced with Russian cruisers heading straight for you , bristling with anti ship missiles , probably able to deploy them 100 miles out we are going to take the wraps off the pop gun trust in our goalkeeper anti missile defence(if it's fitted and working) to keep us safe and steam to within range of a 4.5 inch or 105mm gun. Now I'm not a naval strategist ,

You asked what the gun was for, you were told (not just by me) what the gun was for.