The shrinking Royal Navy

[The Stationmaster]

The thing I keep missing in all of these 'what the Navy is for' comments is mention of the protection of trade.  Maybe a  very old fashioned term but as a country we still rely on masses of imported materials and goods and a large part of that, tonnage wise, comes by sea.  To keep the sea lanes open you need, ideally to control them, you need to ensure that they are not mined or if they are mined you need to be able to clear those mines, and you need to be able to escort merchant vessels to defend them from attack (most likely by submarines but missiles are also a possible threat).

 

All of this goes way beyond immediate 'coast defence' and requires sufficient hulls with the right capabilities to cover all necessary areas round the clock.  Forget projecting power and launching commando etc forces - for which the RN is theoretically well equipped - because if you do not secure trade routes and the passage of merchant shipping you won't have much in the way of fuel and resources to do any projecting of anything.  And it could, as in the past, be awfully embarassing if your large aircraft carrier or commando vessel happens to set off a mine or be hit by a torpedo.

 

Consider those things then work out teh size of a Navy required to carry them out - impossible to create and maintain a force that large in peacetime but still necessary to have the ability to do it at the crucial points and have a force capable of defending them - but I doubt the RN has sufficient vessels to do even that.

[Ozexpatriate]

The thing I keep missing in all of these 'what the Navy is for' comments is mention of the protection of trade.  Maybe a  very old fashioned term but as a country we still rely on masses of imported materials and goods and a large part of that, tonnage wise, comes by sea.  To keep the sea lanes open you need, ideally to control them, you need to ensure that they are not mined or if they are mined you need to be able to clear those mines, and you need to be able to escort merchant vessels to defend them from attack (most likely by submarines but missiles are also a possible threat).

Mike, I agree, which was my point here.

You could argue that air transport makes Mahan somewhat irrelevant, but if a country's economy depends on trade carried in the hulls of ships, then one could conclude that Mahan remains just as relevant and a navy is an existential requirement for a trading nation.

[Jenny Emily]

One thing I never understand is now that successive governments plead poverty for the shrinking forces, how did we as a country afford to pay for stuff in the past? Is it really the nuclear deterrent that has taken all the budget, or were we once a much richer nation? Of course, all the new fangled toys and technology don't come cheap - I expect in real terms building a cruiser or battleship of the past was far cheaper than a frigate or destroyer of today.

[Ozexpatriate]

... how did we as a country afford to pay for stuff in the past?

The battleship arms race before the Great War was financially devastating. A good chunk of the wealth of the Empire got consumed and it got so bad that the Admiralty turned to the colonies to pay for ships "for their protection" (of the mutual trade routes of course).

 

Examples are the battlecruisers HMS (later HMAS) Australia and HMS New Zealand.

 

The number of line of battle ships that a country could afford to put to sea was the measure of a superpower since the days of the Spanish Armada. Every British government since then has faced the challenge of funding the Royal Navy. Usually it was a matter of "we have to have more than the Spanish/French/Germans/whomever".

[Ozexpatriate]

There is the aspect that these days we live in a world where 'warfare' is more likely to be cyber in nature than ships or tanks facing each other and more and more drones will be used rather than manned planes for a lot of missions.

 

That and the threats faced by most of the big powers would not be stopped by having more ships/carriers/planes etc due to the very nature of how the terror attacks work. So perhaps the thinking behind the scenes has been one of putting more money towards fighting cyber warfare and terrorism than surface/air conflicts like we've been used to over the past 60 years.

The list is just longer now.

 

Cyber defence, protection of from foreign and domestic terrorists* and traditional defence are now all sadly necessary.

 

The list is getting longer. It's a shame, since it's all so wasteful and futile.

 

* Mostly political theatre.

 

Cyber warfare is well underway: Israel and the US with the Stuxnet virus in Iran, North Korea v. Sony Pictures, (presumed) Chinese denial of service attacks against US banks etc.

[Legend]

It's an air defence destroyer, it's designed to pick off Backfires and ICBMs, not stooge around the North Atlantic on convoy protection. Nevertheless it does have an ASW and anti-ship capability.

What would you rather be on ? An Arleigh Burke or a T45. Which is has the most rounded capability? Not to mention Arleigh Burkes can go in warm water!

Edited August 16, 2016 by Legend

[The Stationmaster]

What would you rather be on ? An Arleigh Burke or a T45. Which is has the most rounded capability? Not to mention Arleigh Burkes can go in warm water!

 

The Type 45 radar integration is extremely impressive - sitting in Devonport watching aircraft taking off & landing in Glasgow was quite amusing.

[Kickstart]

There is the aspect that these days we live in a world where 'warfare' is more likely to be cyber in nature than ships or tanks facing each other and more and more drones will be used rather than manned planes for a lot of missions.

Partly we have the forces to defend against previous threats. Once forces are in place to counteract a threat then any aggressor is likely to come up with a new method of attack that bypasses the defences.

 

All we have been doing for the last 15 years is small scale engagements against insurgent forces, and what we have developed for that is likely to be of very limited use against a conventional aggressor nation.

 

Drones have the risk with a sophisticated enemy that we will find them defeated entirely by electronic countermeasures.

 

That and the threats faced by most of the big powers would not be stopped by having more ships/carriers/planes etc due to the very nature of how the terror attacks work. So perhaps the thinking behind the scenes has been one of putting more money towards fighting cyber warfare and terrorism than surface/air conflicts like we've been used to over the past 60 years.

Big powers are countered by nukes. They are very cheap compared to a conventional force of equivalent deterrence.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[jjb1970]

Given the RN budgetary pressures the decision to direct the T45 budget into its air warfare capabilities was entirely sensible. The primary purpose of the ship is air warfare and if the air warfare system is good then an anti-surface capability can be added at any time later on relatively cheaply as demonstrated by bolting Harpoon launchers onto the vessels. If the air warfare system had been compromised to reduce costs in order to provide greater multi-purpose capability, then it would have been difficult and expensive to upgrade a compromised system later. There is however a deeper issue with the idea of combining all capabilities into a single platform. Whilst air warfare and surface warfare are easy enough to combine in a single hull, or anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, to combine air warfare and anti-submarine warfare is much more difficult as there are certain aspects associated with AAW and ASW hull and engineering requirements that mean that a common platform is not necessarily the best solution. The RN has generally split AAW and ASW into different platforms and it is an approach taken by many (most navies) if looking at high end AAW and ASW capability in particular. The USN DDG51 design is a multi-purpose vessel but it was still optimised for air warfare and primarily intended as a platform for the AEGIS system. And the T45 is equipped with sonar and good ASW capable helicopters if not hull mounted torpedo tubes which gives them some ASW capability. Engine issues aside, the problems with the T45 are not that it is single purpose as anti-surface warfare can be bolted on if needed and the T23 is a superb ASW vessel but rather that there just aren’t enough of them.

[bescotbeast]

Not much use sitting in Devonport though, Private Eye have carried articles about the defects afflicting this class of ship.

 

The Type 45 radar integration is extremely impressive - sitting in Devonport watching aircraft taking off & landing in Glasgow was quite amusing.

[The Stationmaster]

Not much use sitting in Devonport though, Private Eye have carried articles about the defects afflicting this class of ship.

 

Not that any are sitting in Devonport of course  (they're all at Pompey for some strange reason although not strange in the sense that they are based there but strange when one considers what is, or isn't, happening with them)

 

Update - HMS Daring was at sea today in the Western Approaches

Edited August 23, 2016 by The Stationmaster

[Guest]

Judging by the captioning on this picture we are still ahead of Canada and the US

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37157478

[billbedford]

The thing I keep missing in all of these 'what the Navy is for' comments is mention of the protection of trade.  Maybe a  very old fashioned term but as a country we still rely on masses of imported materials and goods and a large part of that, tonnage wise, comes by sea.  To keep the sea lanes open you need, ideally to control them, you need to ensure that they are not mined or if they are mined you need to be able to clear those mines, and you need to be able to escort merchant vessels to defend them from attack (most likely by submarines but missiles are also a possible threat).

 

 

World trade now consists of a web of connections, so any country that tried to attack ships at sea would quickly find that the negative consequences of their trade links being withdrawn would outweigh any perceived advantages of such an attack.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

That's the global village theory and about as good as we can hope for. Sadly there's always a lunatic few quite prepared to set fires even though they are sitting in a wood framed thatched cottage. And all the evidence shows that such lunatics can achieve complete command of very large thatched barns, to push the simile beyond what is usually considered good written style.

[The Stationmaster]

World trade now consists of a web of connections, so any country that tried to attack ships at sea would quickly find that the negative consequences of their trade links being withdrawn would outweigh any perceived advantages of such an attack.

 

An excellent theory and in some respects very true - but it still doesn't stop a country marching into the sovereign territory of another if it thinks it can get away with it, irrespective of various sanctions and trade links being withdrawn.

 

It's always been the problem - nobody starts a war unless they are absolutely certain they will win;  it's just that most examples show there was a strong element of miscalculation among those who went to war etc on that basis

[billbedford]

An excellent theory and in some respects very true - but it still doesn't stop a country marching into the sovereign territory of another if it thinks it can get away with it, irrespective of various sanctions and trade links being withdrawn.

 

It's always been the problem - nobody starts a war unless they are absolutely certain they will win;  it's just that most examples show there was a strong element of miscalculation among those who went to war etc on that basis

 

 

That only goes to show how little politicians learn from history. No country has won a war by invasion since 1945, and even then it was the Russians wot did it.

[alastairq]

An observation...Somali [and others?] so-called 'Pirates' achieved not inconsiderable success in extracting huge ransoms from ship owners, etc.

 

It has taken a fair while to bring those antics under some form of control.

 

 A lack of concerted co-operation internationally, perhaps?

 

I see much of the RN's future really focusing on 'Policing' activities....

[billbedford]

An observation...Somali [and others?] so-called 'Pirates' achieved not inconsiderable success in extracting huge ransoms from ship owners, etc.

 

It has taken a fair while to bring those antics under some form of control.

 

 

What makes you think that these operations were not under control from the beginning? The whole scenario has the hall mark of a funding stream for the 'right' sort of warlord without there being any possibility of political repercussions.

Edited August 24, 2016 by billbedford

[alastairq]

That observation could be aimed at almost every act of terror.....

 

It's a pity, in a way, the Suez canal was re-opened.....[which is how I knew & worked those waters back 'in the day'....the only things in the Red sea were tankers, and [somali?] fishing boats....and  the Soviets had more or less taken over Aden....]

[2750Papyrus]

I find it sadly ironic that the Russian fleet is passing through the channel on Trafalgar day......

[Fat Controller]

I find it sadly ironic that the Russian fleet is passing through the channel on Trafalgar day......

I suspect I have may have seen the carrier as I drove down to Sainsbury's a couple of hours ago; within a few miles of shore, and chucking out a lot of smoke. Just looked at the BBC News image- that was what I saw.

Edited October 21, 2016 by Fat Controller

[pete_mcfarlane]

I suspect I have may have seen the carrier as I drove down to Sainsbury's a couple of hours ago; within a few miles of shore, and chucking out a lot of smoke. Just looked at the BBC News image- that was what I saw.

I saw the video of it on BBC news - it was chucking out a fair amount of black smoke, presumably from it's boilers. There's also a tug accompanying it. Both of these suggest that it's not in the best of shape. 

 

I'm also wondering what it will do once it arrives off Syria, given that Russian carrier based aircraft aren't supposed to be able to take off with much fuel and weapons (reputedly only a couple of air-to-air missiles). Either the Western defense analysts have got it wrong, or there's a large amount of posturing going on by Russia. 

[billbedford]

I find it sadly ironic that the Russian fleet is passing through the channel on Trafalgar day......

 

 

Why? Are we at war with Russia? Have they fired at fishing boats in the North Sea?

[Horsetan]

Why? Are we at war with Russia?...

 

Would you prefer it if we were?

[pete_mcfarlane]

I'm sure the Russians would win. At least on 'Russia Today'