The Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), which provides essential logistical support for the Royal Navy, is currently operating with only one active tanker, RFA Tidesurge.
Other tankers are temporarily sidelined due to routine maintenance and staffing challenges.
While this situation may appear concerning at first glance, the Ministry of Defence has reassured that current operations remain unaffected. A Royal Navy spokesperson said:
“The Royal Fleet Auxiliary provides crucial support to the delivery of Royal Navy operations around the world, and we continue to meet all of our global commitments.
The numbers of available ships fluctuate due to routine maintenance commitments; these are factored into the operational requirements of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which are kept under constant review to ensure we meet our commitments for current and future operations.”
However, ongoing industrial action by RFA personnel since August 2024 has added complexity. Strikes over pay disputes, with workers citing a real-terms pay reduction of up to 36% over the past decade, have limited the ability of some ships to operate.
The reduction in tanker availability, while relatively fine for the reduced taskings at this time of year, also highlights longer-term challenges for the RFA, including recruitment and retention issues that mirror broader trends across the Royal Navy. Addressing these underlying concerns will be key to ensuring the RFA remains capable of supporting the Royal Navy’s global commitments.
Despite the immediate challenges, we understand that plans are already in place to bring additional tankers online in the New Year as and when required. These efforts suggest the situation, while not ideal, is being actively managed.
Good Grief!
So we’ve still got a blue water navy, have we? These constant reasurances and platitudes from the MoD are becoming irritating
Some time ago, the Thin Pinstriped Line, known for its generally upbeat tone, suggested that the RN was now a part time blue water navy, with the ability to project sea power intermittently. The only true blue water navy is the USN with the capacity to keep several carrier groups at sea at all times, fully escorted and supplied. France and Italy have a similar capability to the UK. The integrated review emphasized an enhanced global role without increasing the budget to deliver it. The question now, no doubt forming part of the latest SDR, is to what extent the UK actually needs a full time blue water capability.
Concentrating operations in the areas where we have continued presence – North Atlantic, Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Cyprus, and Persian Gulf – is realistically the most we can achieve with current and likely future force levels. Sending CSG25 to the far East is at best an irrelevance, at worst a display, not of strength but of weakness.
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One in 6 tankers available (16.66% availability). By cutting the 2 Wave-class it will become 1 in 4 available (25% availability) – and the Govt will no-doubt claim that as an improvement!
Waves can’t really bunker the carriers, and given their age, it made sense to scrap them. also, the cost of dragging both of them back into service to just do the destroyers and frigates would have probably broken the bank, given how long they have been laid up.
Please stop stating thing something that is not just true, the ships are barely 20 years old so have at least another good decade of service in them. Indeed given our drop in escorts it would have made sense to have these back in service to at least provide some semblance of an active fleet. One could have been useful in the Caribbean.
This would have been cheap given their relative low cost to run. Unfortunately when you also run down the RFA as well as the RN you end up with the current embarrassing situation. The Two Waves will be sold because they are good ships neglected by a country that is run by incompetents.
If we keep the waves we have 6 tankers and barely any warships to fill. We really don’t need 6 given the size of the rest of the navy.
It is not that we have too many tankers it is we don’t have the warships we should have as a stated minimum I.e 19 escorts.
To take your logic we should probably dispose of one of the Tides and that is downward spiral we are on.
Absolutely crazy.
Yes we would have been 1 tanker per 2 ships almost, seems excessive but that’s the lack of ships that’s the issue full stop
Jim. Using the rule of 3, if we still had 6 tankers then two on average would be deployed or immediately deployable. That to me does not sound too many.
A worse situation is that we do not have a fleet of 6 or so solid support ships….far from it!!
Launched in 2000 and 2001 so both over 20 years, and approaching their design life of 25 years. As we’ve seen with the Type 23s, keeping ships active beyond their design life becomes increasingly, then prohibitively expense.
My preference would have been to keep them in reserve in case of wartime losses, but with current escort numbers they’re probably surplus even in that scenario. If we can get a lower-tier navy to buy them and flog them to death then the money will come in useful.
What was the design life of Argus?
Some ships can outlive their design others don’t.
100% and the RN has more than just the Carriers that need tanking and with FOST and the supply of such services to other NATO members. 10 years they could easily double that and the Escort Fleet does need them more than the one operational Carrier in the future when the carrier routine gets into the way it has been planned from day one. Short sighted ‘Leadership’ (which is truly questionable of late) in the RN and MOD.
BOOM.
I’m enjoying all the Labour supporters squirming ( not necessarily here, but over the site ) as they realise now the hated Tories are gone that…actually….nothing changes, and might well get a whole lot worse.
How can anything of actual significance about ships have changed in 6 months? Labour can’t magic up new resources emasculated by the Tories?
Albion and Bulwark had already been doomed just prior to the election, the waves were already laid up without crews the T23 fleet was and, oddly, still is on their last legs. The build speed of the 26 and 31 were set by the Tories but is now potentially speeding up. T32 literally never existed it was all smoke and mirrors from the very start when Boris said 32 when he meant 31 or 26.
The Astutes were laid up because of inaction by the Tories, as we’re the T45s.
Come back in 18 months and let’s see if anything has changed for the better
That’s what they call smoke and mirrors.
No one has the balls to say it how it is, as it would jeopardize their career “MOD or politician”
But here’s the ‘kicker’. The Royal Navy is content and says there is not a problem, indeed things will only get better. Do not expect them to get more funding if they are saying they are able to support what remains of the fleet.
The fact that one active tanker is sufficient, says more about the RN surface fleet than anything else. That is not something to be pleased about.
Nail well and truly hit on the head with that one sentence.
Agree, we should worry about the size of the rest of the fleet. Tankers are the only thing we have too many of.
What are Britain’s defence objectives in relation to naval power? What are Britain’s requirements in the North Atlantic? What are its objectives in terms of global deployments? What are its objectives in relation to the carrier strike group? Until a few weeks ago, what were its objectives in relation to sustaining littoral response groups?
You only have “too many” tankers if all of these objectives are actually meaningless. If you don’t need to sustain a carrier strike group. If you don’t actually have any global deployment objectives. If you have no need even to sustain regional deployments … then yes, Britain has too many tankers.
You clearly know little about Naval matter so please refrain from talking ‘Bollicks’.
‘Current operations remain unaffected’. Yeah well it’s Christmas so current operations means as many ships and personnel are at home, the weasel wording has really gone up a notch under this Govt from an already high point. Hopefully we sent Putin a Christmas card wishing him compliments of the season and as it’s the season of goodwill please don’t attack until well into the New Year please.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine most of the fleet is in home waters where tankers are not so useful.
I’m pretty happy having the fleet in the North Atlantic instead of the Indian Ocean at the moment.
To maintain high tempo operations in the North Atlantic fleets tankers are essential in keeping vessels on station and with fewer escorts we cannot simply rotate ships to refuel because we don’t have any.
Correct as we still need to keep an eye on all the nasty folks out there and for the Fleet the Cold war did not end it only reduced a bit.
By a bit do you mean like 90%?
They’ve used similar weasel wording under previous regimes. I also remember Grant Shapps saying in an interview as DefSec that the military had done everything he asked of them so obviously it was good enough. There is no acknowledgement that we are asking less and less because the military can do less and less.
been that way for took long
People on here seem to think that the new government had 2 or 3 warships already built and just waiting to be launched.
The Albion’s were never going back to sea that much was very obvious, neither were the Waves the previous government just didn’t have the balls to actually dismiss them from the fleet.
How should one put it … that is what is called “wrong”. Bulwark was at the end of a 72M pound refit. The intention was to put her back to sea as required.
What the previous government “didn’t have the balls” to do was to provide funding and to solve the manpower problem in order to get these vessels back into the active fleet. But then, the current government doesn’t have the balls for that either. So you are probably generally correct that there is generally a “lack of balls” all the way round.
Should have been kept in reserve as your reserve is your insurance policy you hope not to need but gives you lots of options when you need it. CSG25 when it goes out East and if it was truly operational needs topping up a lot and you cant always hope the locals will allow you to get fuel etc that is why you need more support vessels to support the Fleet. Logisitics from home allows you to stay there doing whats needed. There have been too many incidents that local States have closed down Allied forces stationed on thir patch but at sea you just dont need to ask.
The snooty responses from the MoD and RN are tiresome.
Oh, I’m very “Reassured” MoD….
6 Tankers. 2 about to be scrapped, and only 1 of the other 4 available.
Nice work……
Any discussion about hulls in pointless until the recruitment and retention process is fixed. If any govt isn’t interested in fixing that indicates the route we are taking.