THE ROYAL NAVY has existed as a permanent force since the time of Henry VIII. Some trace its history back to Alfred the Great. Regardless, today it comprises the warships of the Royal Navy, the logistic support ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the F-35 jets, Merlin and Wildcat helicopters of the Fleet Air Arm plus the Royal Marines. It is closely supported by the P8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft of the Royal Air Force. This article will focus primarily on the ships.
The warships include two aircraft carriers, two assault ships, six Type 45 anti-air threat destroyers, nine Type 23 frigates, eight offshore patrol vessels, seven mine hunters, 18 fast patrol boats, four nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines and six nuclear powered fleet submarines.
Warships are large, expensive and complex machines, many parts of which operate at the cutting edge of technology, so they require lots of maintenance. They also periodically undergo refit, when old and outdated components are removed and replaced. The effect is best illustrated by the ballistic missile submarines. Keeping one at sea requires four hulls. One submarine is on patrol simultaneously hiding and able to deliver Armageddon at short notice. A second submarine is in workup to replace the one at sea. The third vessel is in post patrol maintenance and the final one is in refit. Parsimonious politicians regularly enquire whether three submarines would be enough. The answer is always no. Surface vessels face similar cycles.
As ships age the maintenance demands increase as the hulls rust and wear. These demands are particularly acute for the thirty-year-old Type 23 frigates, which are being run far, far beyond their original design life. In April 2024 just five were available. Their replacements are now in construction.
The first of eight Type 26 Frigates, HMS Glasgow, has been launched and should be commissioned in 2026. The first of five Type 31 Frigates should be launched next year and commissioned in 2027. Type 31’s are some 25 per cent smaller than a Type 26. They’re also cheaper, lacking the sophisticated towed array sonar of the Type 23 and Type 26, which means they cannot hunt submarines.
The fleet submarine problem is worse, largely because a dockyard ship lift became inoperable. As the (aging) missile-submarines have absolute priority, much fleet submarine maintenance has been postponed, rendering them unusable. At least three of the Navy’s five Astute class submarines haven’t been to sea for over one year. The ship lift is being repaired and alternative dry docks being converted. Meanwhile undersea defence of the Realm relies on HMS Triumph, launched in 1991. She (all warships are “she”) completed an extensive and expensive life extension refit in 2022.
HMS Triumph will decommission next year, by which time HMS Agamemnon should be commissioned. The seventh and last Astute, HMS Agincourt is in construction and currently forecast to join the fleet in late 2026. (That would be four years quicker than it took HMS Agamemnon to progress from laying down to commissioning. Either BAE Systems has really got the hang of building them or the forecasts are wishful thinking.) The demand for fleet submarines is increasing with growing Russian and Chinese belligerence. Seven may not be enough.
The six Type 45 destroyers are in better shape. Three of them are available and the other three are having the fix for their flawed propulsion system installed. They are superb at shooting down aircraft and some ballistic missiles and now have a land attack capability as well as an anti-ship one.
Following well publicised propulsion problems both aircraft carriers are at sea. Their main limitation is that they can only operate one type of aircraft, the F-35B, which lands vertically. Few other forces use this version of the F-35, (the US Marine Corps, Italy, Japan and Singapore). The rest of our allies, including the US Navy, use either the F35A or the F35C, the latter being designed for catapult and arrested landing. The French use the Rafael and many nations still operate the F18. The Admiralty is now investigating modifying the carriers to enable conventional carrier operations, both for these aircraft types and for drones. It won’t be cheap and begs the question of why they didn’t do that from day one.
Replacing the Navy’s (literally) worn out fleet is a challenge but the really troubling problem is recruitment and retention. Earlier this year two Type 23 frigates were decommissioned as the Navy could not crew them. Both amphibious assault ships are “in reserve” – that is tied up in dock, with no crew and no plans to recruit one. The number of people entering training for the Royal Navy is now 27 per cent under target. The target strength of the Royal Navy is 30,540 including the Royal Marines. They’re some 1,610 short of that with more leaving than joining. Last year the overall strength fell by some 4 per cent.
People join the Navy to go to sea. Given the current reliability problems the Navy has very few warships at sea. Life on the ocean wave has become life tied to a dock. Hence ennui, boredom and resignations. With the resignations comes increased workload for those who remain, resulting in lower quality of life and less inclination to remain. Throw in the perennial inadequacy of service housing and an economic environment where civilian recruiters actively seek service personnel and you have the perfect retention storm that the Navy faces. The overdue fix is decent housing. The quick fix is more pay or the return of the press gang.
Recruitment and retention are even worse for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), upon whose logistic support the surface fleet is utterly dependent. Two of its four Tide Class tankers are inoperative, (one in refit, one with “in reserve” due to lack of crews), as are both its Wave Class ones. Its single remaining “solid stores” ship is also in “reserve.” The first of three replacements is due to start production next year at Harland and Wolff in Belfast, even though that shipyard is in administration.
The few ships that the RFA has are sometimes used to fill roles that would previously have been performed by a warship. This increases the wear on them while depriving the surface fleet of their support. (An RFA vessel substituting for a warship isn’t supporting the rest of the fleet.) The RFA’s serious recruitment and retention problem is complicated by the Treasury’s insistence that RFA seamen are Civil Servants, so pay negotiations are outside of MoD control.
Newer ships and funding for crews won’t solve everything. The Royal Navy is acquiring more roles, such as the permanent deployment of a frigate in Bahrain and more patrols envisaged in the Pacific, courtesy of the AUKUS agreement. (Some of these are being performed by the much smaller and less capable Offshore Patrol Vessels. As well as a warship in the Gulf the Navy usually deploys a warship in the Caribbean, another in the Mediterranean and another in home waters. At least one in refit, another in maintenance and one more in work up and that’s all seven anti-submarine frigates.
That leaves perhaps three of the five Type 31s to cover the rest of the world, (allowing for one in refit and one in maintenance or workup). They’ll be augmented by three or four of the Type 45s. However one Type 45 will usually be in home waters, one in the med and another with the carrier strike group. That leaves and awful lot of ocean for four warships to cover. The inescapable conclusion is that the Navy needs more frigates. Desperately.
Both the Type 26 and Type 31 production lines are still open. That won’t be cheap; A Type 26 costs £1 billion, the Type 35 about £250 million, although it won’t take much money up front as the production lines are full. Such an order would raise morale immediately. The Admiralty could make a compelling case that 600 sailors crewing three warships delivers more deterrence and soft power than the 600 soldiers of a light role infantry battalion tramping round the Sennybridge training area. Axing some light role battalions would provide funding to pay crews more.
It’s not all gloom. British warships are well designed and have a ready export market. The Type 26 has been ordered by Australia and Canada, with Norway and Brazil in discussions. Similarly, the Type 31 has been ordered by Poland and Indonesia. Export sales keep shipyards busy, providing employment and generating wealth, even if making steel in the UK is increasingly challenging.
The government and the nation need to be clear about what we seek from the Navy. If we want to maintain the freedom of the seas we need surface warships. (Submarines, being invisible, can’t deter Somali pirates or intercept Houthi missiles). If we wish to confront the Russian and Chinese navies globally we need more submarines. If we want to invade places (or recapture them) we need the assault ships. If we don’t have the assault ships why do we have the Royal Marines? Do we really need carriers? Is the F35B the best option for the RAF? Why does it take another agency to (fail to) protect British shores when the Navy has 18 fast patrol boats, mostly used to entertain university undergraduates?
Mr Healey became Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in 2020. He had plenty of time to understand what he was getting into. His predecessors all kicked the can down the road, he’s the man who must deal with the consequences of their negligence. Yet he was largely mute while Wallace and Shapps presided over the mismanagement of decline.
Defence was mentioned just 12 times in the 140 page Labour manifesto, mostly in conjunction with building further layers of management to “control waste”. The current defence review is seen as an objective, not an enabling step. It’s time for Mr Healey to bang the cabinet table and point out that Defence is the one thing that only the government can do, and the one thing that government must do. Fixing the appalling state of the Royal Navy doesn’t require another defence review – it needs hard cash and political resolve.
The next article will focus on the Army, whose problems make the Navy’s problems look trivial.
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Main photo of HMS Astute sailing up the Clyde estuary to Faslane by WOA(Phot) Ian Arthur/MOD, OGL v1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26908256 and landscape by LA(Phot) J Massey/MOD, OGL v1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26908267
