The Royal Navy Discussions and Updates

[Seaforth]

Latest press on the rundown

Daily Telegraph front page (getting serious)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/05/navy05.xml

Daily Telegraph editorial:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...GAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2007/01/05/dl0501.xml

summary:

The six warships to be mothballed are the Type 22 frigates Cumberland, Chatham, Cornwall and Campbeltown and two Type 42 destroyers Southampton and Exeter.

It is likely that they will eventually be sold or scrapped. There are also fears in the Admiralty that two new aircraft carriers, promised in 1998, might never be built.

Two of eight advanced air defence Type 45 destroyers on the Navy's order books will not be bought, defence sources said. The order is already six months behind schedule and £157 million over budget.

Two unnamed mine counter-measure vessels and two Royal Fleet Auxiliary tankers, Brambleleaf and Oakleaf, are also under threat.

Steve Bush, editor of the monthly magazine Warship World, said the MoD was bankrupt following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are already reports that ships on operations are ignoring faults to weapons systems in order to save money but will spend cash if it is a health and safety issue.

The Navy is expected to lose one of its three carriers, Invincible, which has been laid up in Portsmouth. One of the three major ports is also under threat of closure. It is believed that the historic Navy headquarters of Portsmouth is most vulnerable.

A final decision on the cuts is expected next month.

This letter explains that the 2 new carriers are still required, and that the reduction in frigates/destroyers to fund the 2 new carriers is justifiable.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/05/navy105.xml

My opinion is that the two new carriers will be abandoned or sold if they are every built, as it sounds like the financial problems throughout the MOD are terminal.

I also believe that the run down in the Navy will be extremely hard for a future government to reverse (as the skilled personnel will go, and this is the era of tax reductions).

Time to get used to the end of the Royal Navy as we knew it, I'm afraid. It's destiny will be a force more like the Australian Navy (17 frigates/destroyers including the 3 recent orders, 12 new patrol vessels, 6 submarines, a few large amphibious ships, 6 minesweepers, and a couple of replenishment vessels). This is not necessarily a bad thing - the Australian Navy is a relatively young fleet compared to the Royal Navy, and already has the patrol ship capabilities talked of in this forum - ie a large fleet of patrol vessels for policing duties to allow the frigates/destroyers to be used efficiently.

 

[Tasman]

Daily Telegraph front page (getting serious)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/05/navy05.xml

Daily Telegraph editorial:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...GAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2007/01/05/dl0501.xml
summary:

The six warships to be mothballed are the Type 22 frigates Cumberland, Chatham, Cornwall and Campbeltown and two Type 42 destroyers Southampton and Exeter.

It is likely that they will eventually be sold or scrapped. There are also fears in the Admiralty that two new aircraft carriers, promised in 1998, might never be built.

Two of eight advanced air defence Type 45 destroyers on the Navy's order books will not be bought, defence sources said. The order is already six months behind schedule and £157 million over budget.

Two unnamed mine counter-measure vessels and two Royal Fleet Auxiliary tankers, Brambleleaf and Oakleaf, are also under threat.

Steve Bush, editor of the monthly magazine Warship World, said the MoD was bankrupt following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are already reports that ships on operations are ignoring faults to weapons systems in order to save money but will spend cash if it is a health and safety issue.

The Navy is expected to lose one of its three carriers, Invincible, which has been laid up in Portsmouth. One of the three major ports is also under threat of closure. It is believed that the historic Navy headquarters of Portsmouth is most vulnerable.

A final decision on the cuts is expected next month.

This letter explains that the 2 new carriers are still required, and that the reduction in frigates/destroyers to fund the 2 new carriers is justifiable.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/05/navy105.xml

My opinion is that the two new carriers will be abandoned or sold if they are every built, as it sounds like the financial problems throughout the MOD are terminal.

I also believe that the run down in the Navy will be extremely hard for a future government to reverse (as the skilled personnel will go, and this is the era of tax reductions).

Time to get used to the end of the Royal Navy as we knew it, I'm afraid. It's destiny will be a force more like the Australian Navy (17 frigates/destroyers including the 3 recent orders, 12 new patrol vessels, 6 submarines, a few large amphibious ships, 6 minesweepers, and a couple of replenishment vessels). This is not necessarily a bad thing - the Australian Navy is a relatively young fleet compared to the Royal Navy, and already has the patrol ship capabilities talked of in this forum - ie a large fleet of patrol vessels for policing duties to allow the frigates/destroyers to be used efficiently.

Thanks for the link Seaforth. If the reports are accurate then it is indeed bad news. However it seems to me that this is basically the same news published earlier in the week in the Times (link in GD's Post 65).

Some of the attached articles were interesting but I wonder about the expertise of the writers. For example it is suggested in one that the RN will be comparable to the navy of Indonesia, amongst others. Now really!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...FF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/01/05/navy205.xml

Certainly the RN does appear to be heading towards parity (apart from the carrier force) with a country like Spain. In terms of numbers it will be inferior to India, but providing it gets its two new carriers it will still, IMO, be qualitatively well ahead.

I hope you are wrong about the fate of the two CVFs, especially as the reductions in the surface combat fleet are supposedly to enable their construction to go ahead.

I agree completely that the cuts go close to being terminal and impossible to reverse for the reasons you have given.

Perhaps another Falklands type conflict is needed to reverse the current trend!

Cheers

 

[Padfoot]

Seaforth, you didn't paste the interesting bit near the end of the article: "...The MoD said yesterday that it had no plans to cut the destroyer and frigate fleet but it "routinely reviewed" defence capabilities "to ensure resources are directed where our front line Armed Forces need them most".

This article is only designed to appeal to the ignorant masses so that they can be outraged by what Gordon Brown is doing to our wonderful navy. It has very little to do with facts.

I loved this bit about the Dutch navy being better than ours: A senior officer, currently serving with the Fleet in Portsmouth, said: "What this means is that we are now no better than a coastal defence force or a fleet of dug-out canoes. The Dutch now have a better navy than us."

lol that destroys any credibility that this article might have had, in my opinion.

 

[mark22w]

Seaforth, you didn't paste the interesting bit near the end of the article: "...The MoD said yesterday that it had no plans to cut the destroyer and frigate fleet but it "routinely reviewed" defence capabilities "to ensure resources are directed where our front line Armed Forces need them most".

This article is only designed to appeal to the ignorant masses so that they can be outraged by what Gordon Brown is doing to our wonderful navy. It has very little to do with facts.

I loved this bit about the Dutch navy being better than ours: A senior officer, currently serving with the Fleet in Portsmouth, said: "What this means is that we are now no better than a coastal defence force or a fleet of dug-out canoes. The Dutch now have a better navy than us."

lol that destroys any credibility that this article might have had, in my opinion.

Hope you are right on that one... how long before the government labels the British Isles a CVF replacement - HMS Great Britain - and fills it with 'navalised' Eurofighters. On the plus side we have enough of them

 

[type45]

Hey guys, long time watcher first time poster. I am very very worried about this. It seems like the general public are mostly ignorant to the fact that the Royal Navy is being broken up. With these rounds of cuts we will have to give up one of our committments in the world. This is not good for Britain or its foreign relations. Being a member of the UN security council we have a responsability to maintain a large well funded military force to react in times of war. With these cuts it will be impossible.
It is true that we need the CVFs but they should not be at the expense of numbers of units. I also find it suprising that members of this forum would see 6 type45s as being adequete. When they where ordered 12 where envisaged. This has now been halved and with at least 2 in refit how can we hope to keep up with committments? We need bigger Defence budgets by cutting the £189 billion social security bill this government have landed us with. We need to stop Gordon Brown, who while increasing the defence budget by 4 billion, forces cuts of 4 billion. And we need to push this government to buy more units, not making do with what they give us. The Royal Navy in its current state is not a Navy, it is a flotilla.

 

[Seaforth]

PR spin - cuts are ahead

I doubt it Padfoot. "No plans to cut the destroyer and frigate fleet" simply means that the plan hasn't been approved yet, which seems to be targeted for February. Or could be that the real plan is to cut CVF & other programs, and the destroyer/frigate cuts have been leaked to make the CVF cut more palateable by the Naval community. It's PR spin by the MoD, to help the government politicians get through another month.

The article has a lot of credibility, coming hard on the heels of similar articles in other publications, and consistent with Richard Beedall's Navy Matters site etc.

Also consistent with what we know about MoD generally - the squalid living conditions for many in the army, the aged transport aircraft fleet, operational costs for too many large operations being funded out of existing budgets, too few and often aged helicopters, poor medical care in the UK for wounded personnel... all point to serious funding problems which can only be solved by savage cuts or large budget (i.e. tax) increases.

Which do you think the politicians will find easier?

 

[Super Nimrod]

Its the political will that is the key. If some terrorist was to turn up in a fast RIB and fire a few hundred rounds of 20mm at a cruise ship with Brits on in the med (not exactly unlikely as risks go, and probably pretty easy to pull off in the popular eastern med). All this would change as they would have to be seen to do something and money would be found instantly. The sad thing is that the politicians can't see the risks with their strategy, and I just don't understand why. :unknown

 

[Musashi_kenshin]

The sad thing is that the politicians can't see the risks with their strategy, and I just don't understand why.

Because they live for tomorrow's headlines, and a headline tomorrow saying "RN gets funding boost" does little or nothing for them.

 

[Grand Danois]

Because they live for tomorrow's headlines, and a headline tomorrow saying "RN gets funding boost" does little or nothing for them.

A headline saying "Gordon Brown secures jobs at Rosyth" will do much for him.

 

[Musashi_kenshin]

A headline saying "Gordon Brown secures jobs at Rosyth" will do much for him.

Yeah, but he could easily engineer a statement before the Scottish elections that made people think CVF is going forward - but it hasn't actually reached main gate. We've already had "false positives" on CVF definitely going ahead more than once.

 

[Super Nimrod]

We will know its in trouble if France starts complaining about the rate of progress :shudder :nono

 

[Systems Adict]

I still doubt that only 4 completed Darings will be built - I think it will end up with at least 6, though it may well be only 6 at first. Then again if one or two were sold to Saudi Arabia, it would give the government more time to order more at a later date whilst keeping the production line open. So provided that any sales to Riyadh were in addition to UK orders, and not designed to replace them, things should be ok on that front.

That's a VERY LOGICAL train of thought......

If they build the 1st three as a batch, similar to the "drum beat" effect they used while building the Type 22/23's during the 80's & 90's, built the "alleged" 2 hulls for Saudi, then built another batch of three, then....

1. It would spread the budget allocated over a longer period of time, thus actually helping to reduce costs to the UK overall.

2. Building 2 hulls for Saudi would be both a financial benefit to the Shipbuilder / UK Shipbuilding industry & the 10's of 1000's of other suppliers of parts & equipment across the UK & Europe, as well as keeping several thousand shipbuilders (UK Voters) employed.

3. By building them in 2 batches, it would help the 2nd batch be more stable in design, as any bugs in systems would have hopefully been worked out, prior to them getting to the test & integration phase, utilising Batch 1 for a bit of R & D (as is a common practice across the defence industry as a whole).

Anyone else agree / disagree ??

Systems Adict
:

 

[Tasman]

That's a VERY LOGICAL train of thought......

If they build the 1st three as a batch, similar to the "drum beat" effect they used while building the Type 22/23's during the 80's & 90's, built the "alleged" 2 hulls for Saudi, then built another batch of three, then....

1. It would spread the budget allocated over a longer period of time, thus actually helping to reduce costs to the UK overall.

2. Building 2 hulls for Saudi would be both a financial benefit to the Shipbuilder / UK Shipbuilding industry & the 10's of 1000's of other suppliers of parts & equipment across the UK & Europe, as well as keeping several thousand shipbuilders (UK Voters) employed.

3. By building them in 2 batches, it would help the 2nd batch be more stable in design, as any bugs in systems would have hopefully been worked out, prior to them getting to the test & integration phase, utilising Batch 1 for a bit of R & D (as is a common practice across the defence industry as a whole).

Anyone else agree / disagree ??

Systems Adict
:

G'Day SA

IMO constructing ships for allies is an excellent way to sustain a country's shipbuilding and support base as well as spreading the costs of R and D. As you say, this applies, of course, to other defence related industries.

When the RN was still one of the two leading naval powers after WW1, British yards built destroyers for other countries at a time when RN orders were few. This put the industry in a far better position to expand production in the period leading up to WW2 than would otherwise have been the case. Before the USA came into WW2 the American aviation industry was developed tremendously with the help of sales to Britain, France and others. As a result the base for expansion was there when America started to rearm. Additionally much was learned from their aircraft being used operationally by forces like the RAF.

Whilst I think anyone interested in the defence of the UK, or in the UK as a friend and ally, would want to see the rundown of the RN reversed, this is at least one way of looking after the industrial base and the skills of its people so that the present decline is not terminal.

What it doesn't address, of course, is how to prevent a terminal decline in the navy's personnel levels, along with the loss of knowledge and skills gained with so much sacrifice over the years.

I felt this way when a largely political decision in the early 1980s killed of Australia's fixed wing naval aviation, destroying more than 30 years of hard work. But that is another story.

Cheers

 

[Musashi_kenshin]

I found a little something on another forum.

 

[Padfoot]

This Telegraph article gets worse the more you look into it. This paragraph seems all wrong:

"...Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram last month revealed that 13 of the Royal Navy's 44 main vessels were already in a state of reduced readiness - known as mothballing - to save cash."

Which 13 ships might this be? I searched all over the RN website and could only find 1 ship that was being held at a low level of readiness( i.e. mothballed) and that was the oldest ship in the fleet HMS Invincible.

I think the editor of the Daily Telegraph should make some much needed cuts and start with his Defence Correspondent, Thomas Harding, who seems strikingly incompetent.

 

[Gladius]

IIRC, the article is refered to the answer given by the Secretary of State for Defence the past month of December to the question asked by Mike Hancock MP. about how many ships of the Royal Navy were (a) at sea, (b) ready for deployment, (c) at reduced readiness and (d) mothballed. The answer indicated without specifying names of ships by reasons of National Security:

a) 13 ships were at sea.
b) 18 were ready for deployment at any time depending on their state of readiness.
c) 7 ships were at reduced readiness
d) 6 six were at extended readiness.

Take your own conclusions about that. But if we thrust in the Secretary of State for Defence, on this point the article is correct more or less correct c+d=13.

But without info about what class or type of ships are on reduced readiness or mothballed the figures are deceitful. Because is very different, talking on overall capacities, have a Minehunter or an OPV mothballed than a DDG Type 42, a SSN or a Frigate. And how many are on extended or reduced readiness by budgetary cuts and how many by maintenance or refits programmed? The article is perhaps correct over the numbers but without the complete background info is another point becoming tendentious.

 

[Tasman]

IIRC, the article is refered to the answer given by the Secretary of State for Defence the past month of December to the question asked by Mike Hancock MP. about how many ships of the Royal Navy were (a) at sea, (b) ready for deployment, (c) at reduced readiness and (d) mothballed. The answer indicated without specifying names of ships by reasons of National Security:

a) 13 ships were at sea.
b) 18 were ready for deployment at any time depending on their state of readiness.
c) 7 ships were at reduced readiness
d) 6 six were at extended readiness.

Take your own conclusions about that. But if we thrust in the Secretary of State for Defence, on this point the article is correct.

Can anyone enlighten me re the two states of readiness, as it applies in the RN?

I presume that 'extended' readiness means that the ships are 'mothballed' and would take considerable effort and funding to put back into service.

Does 'reduced' readiness mean that they have skeleton crews, perhaps supplemented by reservists, and could therefore return to service in an emergency or perhaps for major exercises, or or does it mean something else?

 

[Seaforth]

As I understand it "extended readiness" means that a lot of equipment may be removed (e.g. command & control systems, armaments, power). No crews onboard, all systems powered down, and would the last man off remember to switch the lights off. Sensitive systems left onboard would be cocooned to protect from weather/moisture.

Removal of equipment will be for purposes including storage in a more suitable environment and (and here's the catch!) for use as spares on operational platforms and for refurbishment and sale to overseas operators of the same equipment.

So once a ship hits "extended readiness" it is pretty much doomed as it would be very expensive and time-consuming to reactivate.

Reduced readiness I would think means as you suggest - largely switched off, but with a care & maintenance crew to look after them. In times of emergency crew would be drawn from less important roles at that time (e.g. training staff at training establishments, as training would take second place in an emergency) supplemented by a small proportion of reservists. No participation in exercises. Only for use in an emergency or if plans change. Reduced readiness is itself a step towards foreign sale, since the platform is maintained in a relatively complete state.

 

[Seaforth]

Where's the Navy headed?

I may be wrong (sincere apologies if I am), but the Blair government has placed orders for just 6 frigates/destroyers in 10 years (i.e. the T45s).

Assuming an average 25 year lifespan, that means the RN is headed for a force of 15 frigates/destroyers, unless there is a major change in direction.

The future may be even worse - I don't see much chance of additional frigate/destroyer orders in the next two-three years (whatever the government), so the force may be headed for as lows as 12-13 platforms. i.e. 6 or 7 at sea maximum.

Truly diabolical. Blair and Brown have presided over the ruination of the fighting fleet (though it must be said that the fleet of amphibious assault ships is in a much better state, albeit with delays and cost over-runs).

 

[Seaforth]

Not to mention the patrol ships!

Of course the Blair Government did oversea the 3 fisheries patrol ships and the new OPV/Falkland Islands patrol ship. Perhaps the OPV could accommodate a JSF nfloorl: so they could claim to have delivered a CVF.

They ordered 3 submarines in 10 years, so at that run-rate the RN can be reasonably assured of having 8 submarines in the future (3 of which will no doubt be the strategic missile boats - the Vanguard replacements - as recommended late last year). So.... 2 more Astute orders?

Now, having apparently made the decision to build 3 Vanguard replacements, I suspect that Vanguard may go early, based on the same rationale (a move away from having one boat permanently at sea to placate the CND activists in the Labour party as a compromise for keeping "the bomb").