The Royal Navy Faces Irrelevance

The Royal Navy Faces Irrelevance

The storm clouds are gathering over the worlds oldest Navy, and several are starting to sound the sirens. While the government is spending record amounts of money, the MoD is suffering from a variety of priorities, several of which are politically driven, some of which are driven by the war, and all of which appears to be the result of the absence of a clear and consistent national defense strategy.

In 1998, the MoD released a Strategic Defense Review that brought into focus the need for the Royal Navy to renew its naval carrier capability. At the time this was considered a banner moment for the Royal Navy as it prepared to revitalize itself as a dominant Naval power in the 21st century. The results have been quite the opposite.

Today the Royal Navy is an underfunded shell where capabilities only exist on paper. From the top down, the Royal Navy has enormous voids that blur the lines between theoretical capability and reality. Consider this, the Royal Navy has 2 VSTOL aircraft carriers, but are now forced to deploy their carriers with no aircraft. The Sea Harrier FA.2 has been retired. The sole operational naval air squadron (800 NAS) uses the Harrier GR.7/9 and is about to deploy to Afghanistan, providing land-based close air support to NATO forces there. HMS Illustrious recently made a deployment to the United States, where it was used by USMC Harriers, not as a trial, but because the Royal Navy doesn't have any planes.

While the Harriers are in Afghanistan, HMS Illustrious will be deployed with only helicopters, becoming nothing more than an over sized and expensive LPH. The problems in the Royal Navy aren't limited only to current carriers however, indeed the entire fleet both future and past is suffering from financial neglect.

Consider the retirement of HMS Norfolk after only 15 years, HMS Marlborough after 14 years, or HMS Grafton retired after only 10 years, all three of which were sold at considerable discount and now serve admirably in the Chilean Navy today. These Type 23 frigates rank among the best, most modern anti-submarine platforms in the world, but also highlight a void in long term strategic thinking by the MoD regarding the Royal Navy. Indeed, ships are purchased only to insure jobs, and in retrospect repeatedly have proven to have little to do with strategy.

In the October 2007 edition of Proceedings, Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham, RN (Ret.), and Gwyn Prins warn that things will get worse, not better:

The hemorrhage of numbers of DD/FF, down from the 32 specified in the Strategic Defence Review, has been justified with the “Technology Fallacy.” This asserts that the improved capability inherent in each modern unit renders obsolete the old-fashioned view that numbers matter. This strategically illiterate opinion ignores the obvious fact that one ship, however capable, can only be in one place at one time; and the rising importance of presence missions demands many, many more hulls. It also ignores the fact that the opposition’s capability also improves with time.

On this formal logic, we believe that the future is being sold short. Just as the current Navy is the product of Navy Board decisions made 20 years ago, so today’s build rate will determine the fleet 20 years hence. It takes time to build ships. The record of the last decade speaks for itself. The low building rate since 1997 has been unprecedented since well before World War I. It has been even lower than it was during the Treaty restricted years 1921-36. (See table)

Commissioning Rates Royal Navy Cruisers And Destroyers 1918-1936; Commissioning Rates Rn Destroyers And Frigates 1980-2008 Year Cruisers Destroyer Leaders & Destroyers Year Destroyers & Frigates 1918 7 57 1980 2 1919 7 33 1981 2 1920 1 3 1982 3 1921 1 0 1983 1 1922 3 2 1984 2 1923 0 1 1985 3 1924 1 4 1986 1 1925 1 1 1987 1 1926 2 2 1988 3 1927 0 0 1989 2 1928 5 0 1990 2 1929 4 0 1991 2 1930 3 8 1992 1 1931 1 10 1993 2 1932 0 5 1994 3 1933 2 5 1995 1 1934 2 10 1996 1 1935 3 8 1997 2 1936 2 17 1998 0 1999 0 2000 1 2001 1 2002 1 2003 0 2004 0 2005 0 2006 0 2007 0 2008 0

Five Power Washington Naval Treaty—negotiated November 1921-February 1922 London Naval Treaty—five powers agree to extend capital ship moratorium to 1937, but the Axis powers start to cheat Second London Naval Treaty—nugatory without Japan, Germany and Italy Sources: Jane’s Fighting Ships 1919, 1930, 1939, 1991-92, 2002-2003, 2006-2007 Alan Raven & John Roberts British Cruisers of World War Two (Arms & Armour Press London 1980)

By 2003, all DD/FF ordered by the previous government were in service; the Royal Navy has received none since then. By the time all six Type 45s presently on order enter service in 2014, the commissioning rate for the period 2003-14 will be one ship every two years. Given a nominal service life of 25 years this implies a DD/FF force of about a dozen ships. The steep drop in numbers is matched by dramatic aging of the fleet. In 1997 the average age of the DD/FF force was a little under 10 years. Today it is almost 17 and by 2010 it will be 19. Why do we emphasize the importance of destroyers and frigates? Because without these classes of ship, and the capabilities they represent, the fleet loses its principal patrolling, maritime security, escorting, joint sea-base protection, and littoral effect-capability. They are, in fact, the glue which holds the fleet together; the most visible face of maritime capability.

One of the key points the authors make in the same article is that building two carriers is not a strategy.

Ordering two carriers is not a strategy any more than buying a frozen chicken is cordon bleu cuisine. Yet senior figures in the British defense and political community do not seem to understand that difference. What, after all, is the essential capability without which you have no navy? Not ships; not people; not bases; not even traditions and organizational forms. “The fundamental element of a military service,” wrote Samuel P. Huntington in a May 1954 Proceedings article, “is its purpose or role in implementing national policy. The statement of this role may be called the strategic concept of the service. . . . If a military service does not possess such a concept, it becomes purposeless . . . and ultimately it suffers both physical and moral degeneration.” Astonishing as it may seem to an American readership, as it is to us, Britain currently risks losing a hard-headed sense of its national interests—a loss of nerve, one should firmly notice, from which our Islamist enemies do not suffer—at a time when the scale of maritime risks and threats to general Western security is sharply increasing.

Additionally, maritime force has always had a special utility in times of general and multiple risks. It comes precisely from its capacity—which it possesses more than other forms of military force—to position globally, poise motionless, and provide silent but visible presence without any specific threat while at the same time being able to react quickly to changing circumstances.

But this case is not being made clearly enough. It is of course part of a strategic concept, and therefore not readily reducible to targets, performance indicators, and “value for money” assessments derived from them, which are the dominant management tools of the accountant’s mentality that now runs the British Ministry of Defence. This “Accountant’s Fallacy” is one of several afflicting British defense policy. The Royal Navy is at the brink for more reasons than overstretched people manning insufficient, worn, and diminishing stocks of equipment faced with rising numbers of missions during the last ten years. Our anxiety about these is matched by a more general anxiety about the poverty of maritime strategic thinking.

I completely agree, however it is difficult to say the MoD thinks otherwise. The situation does not improve simply replacing the current VSTOL carriers with the CVF, the questionable number of escorts that will be available combined with the split time strategy of Joint Strike Fighters raises doubt that even the CVF will be able to deploy with enough aircraft to be relevant to its size, cost, and most importantly, role in context with national policy.

The CVF cost is climbing while the carrier itself continues to sit on the design pages. All indications are pointing to only 80 F-35Bs being purchased by the MoD, all RAF. The RAF has already begun discussions that envision eight 9 plane squadrons, but in reality should the RAF use the F-35Bs in the same manner they use the GR.7/9s, one has to question if a CVF will ever actually embark more than one or two squadrons on a deployment. Without the F-35B, also suffering from cost overruns, the CVF is nothing more than a 65,000 tonnes £1.9 billion LPH, nearly £1.6 billion more expensive than the French Mistral class which would be able to perform that role.

So what is the answer? Don't ask the MoD, already they are looking to reduce the fleet further to save money. while also planning new surface combatants and other big ticket future warships sure to keep the industry satisfied. None of these projects, current or future, actually represent a strategy. Richard Beedall makes a similar point today when he pointed out MARS is in trouble,the logistics ships intended to support the CVF stalled, and the Maritime Airborne Surveillance Capability (MASC) now under perpetual study and delay raises legitimate questions regarding what the Royal Navy will look like in ten years.

The sirens sound the alarm, storm clouds are indeed on the horizon, but it might be too late. Despite the ignorance widespread among the people of Britain, the UK is a maritime nation dependent upon maritime trade, and more vulnerable to disruption than most nations because of its critical requirement for imports. I believe the Royal Navy faces irrelevance in the very near term due to the MoD mismanagement of priorities and the governments conscious action in underfunding the MoD, and it will not be prepared for the next major world crisis.