The upkeep of the laid-up tankers RFA Wave Knight and RFA Wave Ruler has cost £13 million since 2019.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) recently detailed the costs incurred for the maintenance and preservation of the RFA Wave Ruler and RFA Wave Knight.

From 2019 to 2022, the cumulative expenditure amounted to £13 million, with annual costs as follows:

  • 2019-20: £3 million
  • 2020-21: £3 million
  • 2021-22: £3 million
  • 2022-23: £4 million

These figures cover care, protection, dehumidification, essential maintenance, and any necessary commercial wharfage.

The MoD has confirmed that both Wave Knight and Wave Ruler will remain in Extended Readiness until 2028. Wave Ruler was designated as such in 2017, with Wave Knight following in 2022. The option for reactivation is being kept under review, but current indications suggest their return to active service is improbable.

In 2018, there was speculative interest from Brazil in acquiring one or both vessels, but these discussions did not advance.

NavyLookout notes that the present fleet of active tankers, including the modest capacity of RFA Fort Victoria, suffices for the Royal Navy’s replenishment needs.

Not only that, I’ve been told there just isn’t the crew for these ships.

The absence of support tankers in the RFA fleet highlights the strategic significance of these vessels for prolonged operations. As these vessels stay in Extended Readiness, their eventual fate, be it reactivation or sale, will eventually be known many more millions of pounds down the road.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
Twitter

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

110 COMMENTS

    • We use to have 4 leaf class which were just standard tankers and could only move around fuel reserves from port to port. The two wavenights were designed to tank back and fourth from the task force to the port. We replaced the four leafs with the Tides which can do the entire job and are newer and more economical.

      • Sorry Jim,but after serving on all the old Leaf and Rover boats, I can confirm that they all had Replenishment at sea capabilities. I remember many occasions at sea refueling RN and other foreign Naval vessels. Many years ago we could even conduct double replenishment including a stern Rig. This is a capability that we seem to have very few resources to dedicate to these days.

        • Olna, Olwin, could do those 3 tasks port strbd and stern /over the bow refuelling and too cap it all have a swimming pool which used too wind us up when coming up too replenish in the med them in shorts us in ovies and life jackets plus hard hats

          • Thanks for that sir ,the 3 Os remembered when the Olna would play host too launching the old Shellducks for the 4.5s and seacats they had too dismantle their swimming pool oh what a shame

          • The problem is,during the kerfuffle doon souff.The r.n. personnel wanted the same,as the merch boys ! Overtime, Crew Bar, facilities, I.e. Beer, Spirits,etc. Single Cabins. Which Warships just couldn’t cope with !! Just shows you the Mentallity of Matelots !! Now the r.n. have Wrens aboard !! Wonder if they can Cope with the Competition !!? Pongoes will never change ! Just a Shower of Moaning Barstewards!!

          • Thanks Robert we all signed the dotted line knew what we were getting into ,and be told “Dredgers can’t be Cruisers” get on with

        • Hi Ted, I was aware of that for the rovers but not aware that all the leafs were retrofitted for at sea refuelling.

          Thanks for sharing.

    • They did about 18 years of amazing service before being put into extended readiness all over the globe tanking, replenishing, capturing drugs and disaster relief. Hardly wasted.

  2. £13 million is not that much really for such a necessary asset. If ever a larger conflict blew up having a 4-6 tanker fleet could be logistically very useful not just to the RN fleet but also for Ops with our allies and especially if access to the Middle East fuel source is threatened or restricted via the Suez, and Arabian Gulf. France is ordering 5, India I think 4. If anything why didn’t they offer them earlier to Canada, whose building two, or the US, India, or Australia whose just had two built? Said this before, can these ships even be converted into littoral or mother support ships of even hospital ships?

    • Exactly

      Having reserve enablers costs money.

      £13 is peanuts if they are in good, ready to sail, condition.

      Money well spent IMHO.

      We go on about the enablers being the differentiators between RN and other navies…..

    • £3m a year to keep a vessel mothballed seems a lot of money to me. Wonder how that cost is broken down.

      It’s not a huge amount in the ground scheme of things but does seem a lot.

      Based on the albions, it would take months to get these active again, so not exactly ready and waiting for a war.

          • I don’t think so, I don’t see them at Portsmouth, Devenport or Faslane but I’m not sure. I thought they were at Cammel Laird but could be wrong.

          • If its in a private yard then it explains the cost. Defence contractors have a licence to print money, of which a fair bit I’m sure returns in backhanders. Well don’t need to guess as they have pretty much all been caught doing it at one point or another in various countries in recent history, so hard to believe it doesn’t happen here.

          • Good find, I think the other one is in the Cammel Laird dock at Birkenhead. Looks like the one at Peel dock still has lifeboats onboard while the other looks less ready which probably make sense.

          • Your not wrong – I live quite close to Camels & see the support vessels on a regular basis (over the years…) Tiderace being the latest…
            Check out this vid from 2019 (Moving dead ship from the Mersey to Bidston Dock Via Alfred dock :-https://photos.app.goo.gl/QjwptuN9TVrdjSyk9

          • By using private wharfage we can continue to give taxpayers money to private companies!!! Just like railways, gas, electric, water etc.

          • i don’t really have issues giving it to private companies as long as they deliver value for money over the public alternative. Unforuntely no matter the government, the PMs think short term, and selling off national assets for quick buck today at great cost tomorrow wins every time.

        • A few months ago, a millionaire moored his £20 million yacht, the Reef Chief, alongside the cruise berth in Liverpool, I worked on the next berth. I got chatting with one of the security staff members on one night shift on my patrol, and he mentioned that it cost £1000 for a day for the 49-meter yacht for the berth. Just think how much the RFA Ruler berth charges would be for a permanently moored ship at Peel Ports and 24-hour security.

          • Why not keep one over in the Asia Pacific. Its cheaper and there when you need it and can work with the OPV’s if ever required.
            Keep one in the UK for training the crew etc.

          • You have to be joking. We have no assets abroad. How would you ever get it ready for service and manned?

          • or you could dock it in a berth owned by the RN and pay nothing. Im guessing that £1000 a day comes with a load of side benefits though.

          • or maybe revoluationaly thinking here, use the ships and don’t pay for the docking. Im pretty sure they could be hired out to private companies if they were vaguely serviable.

          • Not that I’m aware of. All I know is that it’s 1000 a day to hire the cruise berth with two members to man it 24 hours. I can’t say why they chose to moor it at Peel Ports. Obviously, there will be different berth charges in Seaforth. Seaforth docks and cruise berth are both owned by Peel Ports.

          • Yes, and then she moved and moored by albert dock, she was seen in Portsmouth a week befor, nice this yaght.

      • It is not a lot of money Steve, sorry dont know what you are talking about. £3 million a year vs cost of replacing with a new build vessel at £350-400 million each.

        • Its still £3m, to house a vessel. Like I said curious where the money is going.

          For MOD expenditure is nothing but in real world you can buy a lot for 3m, so what is is being spent on.

          • To put into perspective that is the cost of 30 people full time doing nothing else a year if they are paid on average £50k (taking account of pension/tax/ni etc.

          • So maybe it’s 30 people paid to constantly check for defects, security and cleaning? Sounds about right

          • Security and cleaning aren’t paid £50k a year. Full time job of only working on them ships seems unlikely.

          • The Steam ammo ships were placed in to “preservation by Operation” P by O. These ships would need a fairly extensive refit before operation.

          • If you hope to bring a ship back into service after any length of time, they have to be kept ‘warm’, dehumidifier, secure, dry and regularly staffed with a small ‘crew’

      • When the Falklands kicked off 2nd April the 2 carriers were readied by the 4th sitting in the Bason was the Bulwark decommissioned that Monday dockyard workers / inspectors went on board her too access whether there could be time bring her back to a prepared state of worthiness it was a thumbs down on that we were alongside FLJ getting geared up for Corporate and watched from . Small,Ships canteen thinking what’s next someone mentioned the Belfast

        • That’s what I’m wondering. If they are past the point of being able to be returned to service, they should be sold for scrap and added to the long list of cuts/ capability loss. I fear we are paying millions a year for ships that are just there to hide another gap.

          • Too true Steve and yet some go before replacements are ready if ever ,leaving gaps in our capability too project a fully equipped Navy that’s ready for any unseen issue that arises

          • From where we were from the old girl and lads asking the dockies the work required just too get her engines , back and running and then Genies, lifts , Radar, Sonar ,would have been akin too a whole refit and as the Illustrious was ready for service when the Hermes returned parts were removed from the Bulwark as spares so alas she went for scrap Davey

          • There was always that what if scenario. Could Bulwark have replaced Hermes if she was damaged or worse sunk? I guess you answered it, in that she might have been made ready given enough time. But was in no fit position to be sent within a time scale that matched the pace of the conflict: Cheers Tommo.

    • My thoughts entirely. The cost of housing increasing numbers of undocumented economic migrants over the same time period would be greater I suggest – and I am not lacking in compassion when I write that. Concrete rot in our schools? Everything has a cost and it is never trivial it seems.

    • I wonder how much it costs to have the ships sitting alongside active? It seems a good deal to keep the ships in a safe state.

    • It’s about the same amount of money spent on the highland bagpipe school that George Osbourne kept open because the Queen wanted it. He was quite happy however to scrap the aircraft carriers, MPA and half the RAF FJ fleet.

  4. I agree, it’s chump change, we need to stop looking at costs of reserve equipment and personnel as a waste of money. These ships are serving their purpose by sitting at the dockside. In conjunction with the 4 tides they give us the second best global at sea refueling capability in the world.

    Store ships are important but you can always overload a vessel with stores but oilers are vital for a modern navy to operate at sea, there is zero alternative.

  5. Better to have such a reserve than not. Defence is not cheap and holding assesst is essential for war reserve. Recent treasury thinking has led to much-reduced war stocks that have been exacerbated by the Ukraine war. Thankfully, depots such as Aschurch have been saved from demolition for ‘thousands of ouses’ and will become a state-of-the-art storage facility worthy of the British Army. Longtown will soon have a huge brand new super warehouse (12 football pitches). It’s all too easy to glance at inventories and think, ‘wasteful’ and I remember MPs questioning the need to store thousands of trucks and tanks, without understanding the importance of war reserve.

      • David Camron, the Harrier butcher and there are rumours he wanted to scrap the Prince of Wales all for what he thought was urgent fiscal control. I remember him saying, (allegedly) ‘We can’t keep flying aircraft around when there is no direct crisis!!’ Such a narrow arrogant statement needed to be challenged. Thank God we did not need those amazing aircraft between the purchase of F-35.

        • He also got rid of a large number of health and safety officers and removed house building regulations. Now new builds have between 300 and 1000 snags !

        • Met Cameron once in a Defence context linked to industry. He didn’t understand defence, didn’t want to and quite simply played fast and loose with the defence of the country for a decade .

          • I just hope the government don’t let him Get to close to Defence, Lord knows what he’s offered the Ukrainians .He really did do so much damage to the UK Armed forces and is side kick George Osborne .🙄 Please not again. 🙏 🇬🇧

  8. If the ships are not at sea, but are “ready”, where is the need for at-sea replenishment ?
    We are being conned by the MoD and the Admiralty.

    • You don’t need them when the fleets bombing around the North Atlantic but if we need to send a task force to the far east in say 2027 when the supreme leader recons he is ready for a swim across the Taiwan straits we will need everyone we can get.

      At sea replenishment is a growing gap and hopefully they can lease a ship from the USN but it’s a terrible position to be in. Once the three FSSS are finished we will have an embarrassment of riches much the same as we now have with the tankers. Feast and famine, always the HMG way.

    • Well, RFA Wave Ruler is at Peel Ports, Seaforth. So, I can imagine it will be mooring fees to Peel Ports and private security. Because of my security job, which I have just finished, I occasionally spoke to the security staff on the berth next to mine on the night shift. He mentioned that a private firm has guys occasionally walk around the vessel to make sure there are no intruders 24 hours a day. So I’m told. Easy money, really. But, firms being firms will overcharge and only pay the staff the going rate.

      • Thank you for that Coll. Just asking… again I assume, it is only ships that are laid up, mothballed or whatever, that have to pay mooring fee’s?

        • No, any ship alongside a commercial Berth, I.e a non UK military port has to pay mooring fees, these usually dependonits length. For large, type 45 / Bay class UK ships in Bahrain I believe its in the region of 10K a day.

  10. Lets not forget, as the MOD frequently has done in the past and still does at present that scrapping a useful military resources over a miserly maintenance cost is much much more costly, especially when the capability is attempted to be regenerated by needing to purchase or build from new a replacement. The cost of maintaining the Wave class in reserve is nothing compared to the cost of replacement.
    The RN should be maintaining a reserve fleet of warships and auxiliaries just as the USN does. Ready as a contingency against the day we might actually need these vessels.
    Id like to see some of the lifex modernised type 23s leaving service and going into a reserve fleet- there is plenty of dockyard space in the UK to house a reserve squadron of say 6-8 of the type 23s that are in the best condition.
    The MOD needs to get wise to this issue and store away rather than scrapping everything as fast as damn well possible.

    • Actually the maintenance cost isn’t miserly, there is a reason why civilian tankers are scrapped at around 20 years of age, the running costs keep increasing and parts are hard to get hold of. They’re obsolete to be honest

  11. Would there be any benefit in having one of these based in the Far East alongside the 2 OPVs (and later the 2 T31). Increase our presence in the region and also offer RFA crews a more prestigious posting option?

  12. In the scheme of things a few million per year to keep assets which might become essential bearing in mind heightening tensions seems like are bargain. If they had been sold many on here would, rightly in my opinion, be complaining that that was short sighted.

  13. Money well spent. UKR proved the fallicy of peace dividend cuts. All we do is enable & embolden our enemies. Russia & PRC love our running down of all our defence assets. Having a couple of spare tankers is very wise. If you have bare minimum, or even less, if an enemy takes advantage of your weakness & suddenly takes out a couple of vital RAS ships, then your whole fleet is hobbled.

  14. The underlying problem is that the cost of replacing equipment for the three services is considerably larger than their equipment budget.

    Hence repeated black holes in defence spend, particularly by the RN. It was tens of billions of pounds last time I looked.

    Hence the MOD is charged with making x billion of savings each year. They have a silly mantra, ‘Reduce to Produce’ or something, under which the accountants sell off or scrap every item that comes out of service.

    That is why Hercules got junked while it had many more active years of service. I have lost count of the hundreds of useful protected patrol vehicles already sold off. The trouble is the politicians and Treasury only see money and cost savings, the necessity for war reserve stocks only causes their little eyes to glaze over.

    The service high head yins should be drumming this into the politicos, but then they face a dilemma. ‘If you want these shiny new warships/aircraft/AFVs, which you don’t have the budget for, you’ll have to sell of these Wave tankers, Hercules, PPVs, won’t you?’

    2.5% of GDP can’t come soon enough.

  15. RN/ FA apart who trains sailors in this country ? Could not some other use be found for them enabling to be rushed back into service if necessary ? Just a thought.

    • Merchant Navy seafarers are trained by way of an apprenticeship scheme at colleges throughout the UK, though it is not a great system.

      British seafarers are not in particular demand as they are expensive compared to foreign crews.

      There is no use for these ships outside of military use, are they are overly complicated for civilian use with too small a cargo capacity and too large crew quarters for the size. They are also obsolete, and difficult to get parts for. Due to increased running costs most tankers are sold at 20 years to the Africans who will limp them along until they’re scrap.

  16. I heard the Americans were interested in them, as a quick way of covering a Pacific tanker shortfall. What if we did lease/lend in reverse? So they are based in Hawaii or Guam. Have a mainly American crew. A token few RN/RFA. Then are available to support five eyes ships in the region.

  17. Given the shortage of Royal Navy ships, can’t these be given some secondary role. Would be a waste to sell them off, being relatively new.

  18. Off topic, but NL just mentioned the Swedes are adopting CAMM on their Visby corvettes. Good on MBDA and UK. And more to follow hopefully. It would be good to see a bit more of Land CAMM adopted following on from success with Poland.

    • Well good for the Swedes. It’s a great family of missiles and looking to get better all the time. If I had a corvette, CAMM would be my first port of call too.

  22. Doh…. We need to have backups as we saw even in the Falklands ships get sunk, without spares the navy might as well be sunk as well, a ship with no fuel or ammo is bugger all use to anyone. What we should be doing is building nuclear powered ships, they need less stuff from replenishment craft. Indeed the US is even looking at using already proven techniques to extract co2 from seawater (you can do it from air as well) to add energy from the tractor, water and produce aviation fuel for the planes. Time the British realised that doing everything on a shoestring is failing our security and those hen houses we keep paying for are unprotected

  23. Aye on that

    According to the House of Commons library the Home office spent around £3.6 Billion on Asylum costs in 2022/23 about £2.23 Billion of that on HOTEL ACCOMMODATION……

    and here we are quibbling over a pishy £3-4 million per year to keep essential assets going. We really do live in a clown society probably not far off the final days of Rome. History repeating ………..spoiler things didn’t end very well🙈

    🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧

  25. The only reason they haven’t been sold is because of the outcry.
    They will never sail as RFA again. Already had multiple viewings with a view to sale.

  26. in general military spending, it isnt a lot of money and least we have the option of reactivating two useful assets if required

  28. Many merchant seamen will not sail on R.F.A’s anymore, in the 80s and 90’s the ships were great to be on as they were very much like merchant ships so qualified merchant seamen were happy to man them, however now they are too much like navy vessels, rules changed, epilettes to be worn, bars removed, and run like R.N. ships so many time served, professional merchant men won’t man them out of principal.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here