Royal Navy patrol vessel HMS Spey recently hosted notable military dignitaries while docked at Yokosuka Base in Japan, signalling continued cooperation between international naval forces.

The ship patrols international waters, focusing on securing and monitoring them. View the original tweet here.

HMS Spey’s current presence in Yokosuka marks a significant milestone—it is the first naval port visit facilitated under the new Japan-UK Facilitation Agreement.

This arrangement underscores a deepening strategic relationship between the UK and Japan, aimed at enhancing security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. The visit from Vice Admiral Keicher of the US 7th Fleet, along with Yokosuka Regional Commander Ito, highlights the importance of HMS Spey’s mission.

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
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34 COMMENTS

  1. Many folks criticise these ships, comments about they need a bigger gun, SSM or SAM but that’s not what they are designed to do.
    They are there to patrol overseas territories, show the flag and free up other very scarce resources for higher end activities.
    They need to do this in an economical way so they have small crews that rotate overseas and be above all are very reliable and easy to maintain.
    Folks forget that they are also very useful because they provide training and experience for crews in watch keeping and junior command.

    It’s interesting to see some of the issues other Navy’s are having with basic command, seamanship and Watch keeping functions. Ships are having accidents (some fatalities) and in most instances it is put down to poor leadership and lack of competently trained and experienced crews.
    There have been reports and investigations into such instances in the USN, JMSDF, Norwegian Navy and most of it was due to the same issues.
    So small ships provide the opportunity to learn and gain experience before being let lose on a multi million £ Frigate / Destroyer etc.

    The bit that I always scratch my head about is their extraordinary availability figures compared to other much more expensive ships. Which IMHO probably has a lot to do with original KURs and contractual obligations for the B1 Rivers.
    Basically the availability was a contractual obligation of the builders and they were responsible for the service as well (they were leased). The result was a robust, well thought out and reliable design which was easy to fix.

    • I understand all that but as they are technically a warship should they have better armament to be able to defend themselves and deter others

        • Neither were a lot of anti sub units during ww2 but God knows They did more work than the battleships.

          • Which Battleships? Because if you mean Royal Oak then point taken, but if you mean Warspite then… not so much.
            (Also if you’re referencing the Flower class, they where definitely warships).

          • Warspite Ok, but if you do a little research you will find the we escorted convoys with al sorts of craft Evan some very strange ones,.. Was an escort carrier a warship???? Or a grain ship with a shed built on a wooden platform….

          • Maybe try a bit of reading comprehension? I asked if you where referring to the Flower class corvettes, a simple “No I was referring to other things” would have sufficed free of condescension.
            If you bother to take your own advice and do a bit of research you’d find we did in fact use all sorts of strange things to escort convoys… including battleships.

            Oh and Escort Carriers are most definitely warships to answer your very silly question.

          • Don’t want to carry on but a look at requisitioned trawlers used by the royal navy Dury ww2 gives many name that most have never heard… I suppose if needed we could do it again but not sure if it would work today.

          • We could have a register of suitable private small craft which would be taken up in an emergency.

          • Seeing as successive governments have not supported the UK fishing industry and allowed our EEZ fishing stocks to be plundered, I don’t think we have many fishing trawlers left. Certainly not enough to adapt to armed X vessels with long range endurance necessary for ASW duties.

          • I’d have thought long range USVs, USSVs and airborne drones and blimps/ airships would be better idea, all networked together with SUSAT nets in the Atlantic, North Sea and GIUK gap

    • Does make me wonder what could have been done with the original C3 global corvette program that got canceled and basically replaced with B2 river class. Also particularly in terms of availability and ability to stay on working station with ease.

      • Lost opportunity mate. See my post above. Basically that is what the European nations are jointly looking to develop a low cost low manning , proliferative corvette design which can have a modular multi-mission weapons and sensors fit. The UK could just join that programme? Why not? End result is likely to be a class of 20+ vessels for EU nations so unit costs should be relatively low.

    • Beaut ships. Kind of understated but can go everywhere. Would like see them get some more international orders, even license builds and maybe with a hangar option.

    • ABC agree. gives presence to places we would never get to otherwise and must be great experience for the crews. low tech, low key has its advantages.

    • They are not warships though are they,yet they are big enough to be fitted out with decent weapons,I think you’re missing the point here. When we had a navy yes this kind of ship would have been acceptable but now,no,there isn’t enough hulls to be doing whatever crap they’re doing,the navy has to be clever on how they can keep platforms at sea instead of being obsessed with disaster relief crap

      • So they are big enough to have better weapons. So what? A cross channel ferry is big enough to be fitted out with weapons too.

        You don’t seem to understand that there is a patrolling job the Royal Navy does that isn’t about fighting. I think we should have a plan to uparm the Rivers if there’s an existential war, but right now there isn’t, and we need to spend effort on arming some real warships to deter our enemies and make sure that existential war never comes.

        • They the patrol ships are the first line of defence for overseas territory and expected to ward off invaders attackers with 25mm or 30mm weapons seems rather stupid, especially for light cruiser weight ships.

          • “Light cruiser weight ships”
            The last time a Royal Navy Cruiser was built that was even close to River B2 displacement was in 1896, I think that comparison is slightly irrelevant now.

          • Wouldn’t they be warding off attackers with the White Ensign on the rear ?

            Regardless of any offensive weapons, a Royal Navy ship turning up as first line of defence for an overseas territory means “the invaders” have to either back off or commit an act of war against the U.K.

      • You do understand that if they where replaced or upgunned we’d have fewer ships because of the expense and then we’d have to stretch our surface escorts even further right?

        • Yes that’s correct under the current frankly ridiculous situation of the core defence budget being pegged at 2%. Then lumped with the costs of delivering the strategic nuclear deterrent (thanks Cameron and Osbourne for that piece of destructive creative accountancy) armed forces pensions and now seemingly supporting the war effort in Ukraine (surely all costs for that should come out of the foreigner aid budget…ditto looking after the illegal migrants. No budget to cover those costs then the illegal migrants get no benefits. Simple as that.
          The fact is the defence budget needs to go up. It has to reach close to 3% to cover all the added elements that have been allowed to creep onto it, robbing the armed forces of mass, key new programmes and leading to nothing but cut backs.

      • They were fitted to a Naval standard more than the Brazilian ships and I’d definitely call them warships. My 11m wooden launch from 1922 for instance was taken up as HMS ‘any name’ in 1941-1944.

    • Being simpler ships with less complicated equipment and also having small crews that can easily be swapped out means the Rivers are operational more often. Also the nature of patrolling with a short duration vessel around far-off maritime areas means they have to visit port more often and are highly visible.
      Our T23 and T45 need more time between cruises for maintenance and refits on many expensive & complex equipment and systems. They need more time for crew training and certification. They are usually far to sea doing their duties and so visit ports less often for press opportunities..
      People complain about River OPV, but even in Nelson’s day they had many cutters, sloops-of-war and brigs , definitely not fully blooded warships. Even frigates were not considered ships-of-the-line and had to stay away from full blown battles, being used as pickets and communication relays for the fleet.

  2. If the shipbuilding strategy is to believed, there’ll be more OPVs build in the 2030s, I would enjoy seeing an improved River design that can be built in greater numbers and still some we can crew via a high degree of automation. Will probably have to be built by Babcock as BAE is stacked with orders.

  3. If I was a young free and single JR fresh out of Raleigh, SPEY or TAMAR would be my dream draft!

    “Join the Navy and See the World” used to be the moto until the 1970’s, but for decades most sailors have during a typical 12-year career been lucky to get East of Suez once. Albeit a few specialists have the opposite problem – too many long deployments too quickly!

    The CSG21 deployment and subsequent TV series sadly did the RN no favours due to Covid. X-fingers that CSG25 will be a different story, and that nations are clamouring for a port visit this time round. Australia really deserves a visit, although I doubt if that will happen. Am I correct in thinking that the last RN carrier to visit Oz was ARK ROYAL during the Outback 88 deployment?

  4. The batch 2 rivers could easily be the basis for that dirty word. Corvette. The RN could really use a force of corvettes. If we could get a vessel with sea Ceptor, NSM, a 56mm BAE gun and dragonfire + a CIWS (Bofors 40mm or phalanx) with a crew of <70 then we could return to an armed Falklands patrol duty and a more robust defence of our EEZ.
    Build the corvette in batches. Type outlined above would be patrol and surface strike.
    Could have an optimised ASW version as well and a special forces, raiding version for littoral warfare.
    RN forgets it's past. It was corvettes that won the battle of the Atlantic.
    The European powers are jointly developing an EU corvette design for just such a multi role multi designed batched construction vessel as Italy, France and possibly Spain and Portugal and Greece all look to develop a large volume design warship with low crew requirements, high automation and modular weapons and mission fits.

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