Defence experts have warned MPs that the proposed Atlantic Bastion concept for monitoring submarine activity in the North Atlantic will depend heavily on having enough warships and submarines to track hostile vessels once they are detected.
Giving evidence to the Defence Committee during a session on Defence in the High North, analysts said the concept relies on a network of sensors, unmanned systems and surveillance technologies designed to identify Russian submarines moving into the North Atlantic.
Dr Marc De Vore, Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, told MPs that the initiative is intended to monitor submarine movements and protect key sea lines of communication linking North America and Europe.
“Atlantic Bastion is using a variety of sensors, unmanned vessels, and underwater sensors to monitor traffic through the North Atlantic,” he said. “That means being able to identify Russian submarines as they try to transit towards the North Atlantic to areas where they could be a threat to us or our sea lines of communication.”
He explained that the concept builds on earlier Royal Navy work, including research conducted under Project CABOT. “It represents a judicious application of emerging technology to our security challenges,” he added.
However, De Vore warned that detection alone would not be sufficient if the Royal Navy lacked the platforms required to maintain contact with adversary submarines. “Where we may have a problem with the Atlantic Bastion is whether we have enough frigates or attack submarines of our own that are capable of following Russian submarines as they have been identified, so that the track is not lost,” he told the committee.
According to De Vore, Russian naval doctrine anticipates detection during transit through the North Atlantic and includes tactics designed to evade NATO tracking forces. “Their plan is essentially for their submarines to lose the NATO vessels trailing them in the Sargasso Sea, and then double back to whatever their intended target set is,” he said.
He also noted that Russia could attempt to surge submarines into the Atlantic before the outbreak of conflict, presenting a challenge for NATO forces that would be unable to engage them during peacetime.
“If they are surging through the Atlantic Bastion while it is still peacetime, we cannot sink them,” he said. “We therefore have to essentially remain in contact with them until the balloon goes up.”
The ability to sustain that contact would depend on having enough capable escort ships and submarines to pursue detected vessels across the North Atlantic. De Vore told MPs that this made continued investment in frigates and allied naval cooperation essential.
“Following through on our frigate purchases is not an either/or with the Atlantic Bastion, but it becomes useless if you cannot pursue afterwards,” he said.
He added that cooperation with NATO allies would also be critical, as partner nations possess additional escorts that could assist in tracking hostile submarines once detected.
More warships needed? WOW, I wish I was an expert. 🤔😊
GR,
Perfect argument framed for justification of a Batch 3 T-26 order of multiple vessels. MPs and PM warned that a negative vote will be prominently featured in a “Pearl Harbor file”. Only question would be whether time would be available to tar and feather those deemed responsible for an inadequate defence of the realm.
As long as I get achance to join in with the tar and feathering.🙃
Type 21 brings to mind when numbers were seen as important, now we read guff about unmanned “systems”. Then we used to have an industrial base that could build hulls. Thirty frigates and destroyers when we went down south, now we can muster about four or five at a time on a good day.
One word, banjaxed. We have floating gin palaces called carriers with second rate American aircraft/weapons. We need frigates and submarines.
We are not prepared for war. We are prepared for welfare however, with a thriving people import business, and a million young “neets” living off the state and mum and dad.
Still, it could be worse…..
‘second rate american aircraft/weapons’? lol, drama queen
No mention of the 150 billion we spend on Pensioner UBI, I see?
I guess that’s a taboo we wouldn’t dare address.
I will. Current pensioners have been paying in for up to fifty years for their £12 grand a year which they pay tax on if there is any other income . You can always say no when your time comes if you’re against it. 🤔
They didn’t pay enough taxes to cover it.
They didn’t have the triple lock when they were working.
Pensioner poverty was obscene during the current pensioners’ working lives but now they expect to be looked after at the expense of the state (that, again, they didn’t contribute nearly enough to. See: debt to gdp ratio).
25% are millionaires.
61% own their homes outright.
And you think that I should be giving them free money as they run the coffers dry?
I wonder if you are a pensioner, or just a useful idiot.
You’re obviously not as sweet as your name suggests, nor do you have the ability to function without being insulting.
But not a single refutation to my points, just complaining about the final line.
Interesting. Maybe because you know it’s unjustifiable while our armed forces are starved of money?
I’m sorry but I don’t remember you mentioning our armed forces. Perhaps you forgot in your anger about pensioners. Good bye.
I don’t think you understand what publication this is in your old age.
This is a defence journal, talking about defence matters.
The top of this thread specifically addresses the funding going to the welfare state, rather than the armed forces.
I really shouldn’t have to spell this out for you. None of this is complicated.
Stop being a fucking arsehole. People paid into the pensions for years, this ain’t charity. You fail to see that the highest earners paid more in tax!!!!!!!!!! No means testing of pensions.
Lol, did they fuck.
Pensioners didn’t pay even close to what they’re going to take out. The greedy fucking pigs starved the pensioners of their time and froze them in their homes, now they dine out on my money with their noses deep in the trough.
I bet you’re one of the swine that just adores dipping into my pockets to pay for your next fucking cruise. It’s just a shame you sick animals won’t suffer the collapse of the country you dogs fucking caused.
What has been highlighted is essentially the fundamental flaw in every “defensive “ plan that has ever existed.. the moment a nation focuses on “Defence” as the only plan it has lost.. the Atlantic bastion without major surface combatants and SSNs that can go offensive, take the fight to the enemy nation is essentially the 21c maritime version of the Maginot Line.
Agreed. One must always take the offensive to any enemy.
Another readon I’m terrified of the left, we’d be an impotent defence force reacting to others moves as they set the world stage to their advantage.
To be honest I think that has essentially been everyone since Blair.. we got so damaged by being dragged into pointless forever wars we developed a turtle NATO will protect mentally..
TBF, I’m equally terrified by a right-wing that seems obsessed with ridiculous, show-piece rhetoric about expanding the army by 1000s.
None of the available alternatives to Labour have a good vision for defence.
Weird amount of sea blindness in the Conservative announcements too, lots of hand-waving about the Army.
It just needs one party to have a Maritime national strategy and they’d have my vote next election, just saying if any politicians are reading this.
Problem is that army argues that QEC ate my tanks/APC/etc etc – the reality is that equivalent monies were allocated to the three services.
RAF spent it well.
RN had QEC
Army tried to develop various things and failed having spent most of the money. Army constantly try and change the narrative to the money being taken to pay for QEC – the projects were army cancelled and then the remaining budget(s) was/were Osborned away.
The Liberals are not right, and also made the Army commitment too I recall.
The right still “wins” for me, as I cannot think of any who would have the sort of defence policy the SNP, Greens, and the Corbyn far left have, basically disarm, which was in the previous Green manifesto and is standard regards the nuclear question.
Nothing wrong with Army expansion, those thousands should go straight to the Royal Logistic Corps, Royal Engineers, REME, Royal Army Medical Service, , and the Royal Artillery.
Not the primary combat arms.
I think you can write that as, ‘Nobody has a coherent overarching plan or policy platform for anything. Just a series of sound bites.’
Ed Davey is doing a clown act on replacement for Trident. If you are going to do anything then it would be free fall or cruise launched to start with.
Of the many and varied things to spend ££££ more nuclear isn’t top of my list. In a lot of case, the answer is more mass of what we already have with is the safest way of building things up without cost blowout.
That is my concern too Jonathan. Any defensive line, or area-wide network like AB, can be outflanked, or a hole punched through it, cf Gazala Line, or, in the case of the North Atlantic, Russia just needs to get its submarines to sea before initiating hostilities. The North Atlantic and High North covers tens of thousands of square miles and it would take a vast armada of sensors and these unmanned ships to detect let alone do combat with Russian submarines.
The greatest danger in the AB CONOPS is the defensive mentality it will inevitably engender. ‘We don’t need to worry about the Athantic sea lines, AB will take care of all that’.
It would be more logical to rely on a couple of ASW squadrons to do the ASW job, ably assisted by the unmanned/optionally manned smaller vessels envisaged. The latter can add C-UAV, maybe anti-missile capability, maybe autonomous ASW up to a point, basically constitute a useful force multiplier.
The presence of ASW frigates with an air defence destroyer gives the commander an attack option too.
Yep surface warships give options..and if your in a war the first option should always be hurt your enemy a line of defences cannot do that. Counter history is difficult, but you have to wonder how WW2 would have gone if the BEF and French army had committed to an attack on Germany.. we can sort of extrapolate with the Saar Offensive France punched 5 miles into Germany in 1 day the German defence collapsed.. but France just sat there then returned to the defensive line.. General Alfred Jodl pretty much said if France had continued its attack Germany would have collapsed within a couple of weeks.. and he was in a position to know.. offence wins..
Perhaps the mix of uncrewed vessels should include a ‘submarine chaser’ designed to keep pace with nuclear subs once they pass through the main detection line?
Something like a 60m TriSWACH using the hull bulb to fit a massive hull array so that it doesn’t need to deploy a TA but still has good seakeeping at high speeds.
The truth is no surface vessel on its own is ever going to keep track of a nuclear sub that is trying to run away from it.. yes surface vessels can have a high dash speed.. but that SSN can go faster for longer and the surface vessel will not be able to track a sub while sustaining high speed.. and as soon as the weather turns nasty and you have a high sea state.. the surface vessel is slowing or it gets smashed to bits.
The other issue is.. if Russia sorties its submarines ready for war.. what do you think that SSN will do with any surface ship that has been charging along keeping contact with it when the Russian clock hits war time.. essentially anything obviously chasing sorting Russian SSNs are going to take a first shot of the war right under its keel…
It’s a bit of a bind as Americans victims have come to know, he who shots first with massive power tends to get an advantage.. unless the enemy can preserve its own Sunday punch and smash back causing even more damage..
Essentially this is the weakness of defensive strategies.. lots of drones wandering around the Atlantic sounds lovely… but what will actually stop Russia going to war with the UK and EU.. the ability to utterly and completely destroy its navy’s in the high north no matter where they hide, the ability to utterly suppress its air defences and destroy its strategic military infrastructure.. and then the ability to keep on pounding it and isolating it until it signs a peace…
Drones are important but really we want them to be part of an offensive posture…supporting our surface warships..
Let’s just look at china.. China has been playing with large surface drones and underwater drones since 2016.. it’s the only nation with a fully fledged operational drone warship… has it put all its investment into drones… has it hell, I will tell you where china has invested
1) building the biggest shipbuilding industry in the world so it can now build over 50 million deadweight tons a year.. compared to the U.S. 0.1 million tones.
2) building the biggest naval shipbuilding capacity.. its building about 150,000 tons of surface warships a year.. they us manages about 20,000
3) building the biggest nuclear submarine shipbuilding capacity in the world.. 24 bays for 24 boats.. with it seems another 8-12 building.. it can now build about 5-6 nuclear submarines a year ( when you consider.. the Uk has 4 bays, France 3 and the US 5)
From this last year it churned ( launched) out:
1) 13 destroyers ( 11 7500 ton and 2 13-14,000 ton)
2) 2 ASW frigates ( 6000 tons ) with 68 silos
3) about 3-4 SSNs
4) 2 fleet replenishment vessels ( 22,000 tones)
5) 50,000 ton light aircraft carrier/assault ship
There are reports that china is now parallel constructing 2 large aircraft carriers as well more of the 50,000 ton light carriers..
The nation that is though most about how it can win a large naval conflict against what was a larger enemy has come done on a simple truth.. warships and more of them.. it’s played with drones.. but china has been the single most experimental naval power on the planet and what’s it doing… building more major surface combatants.. yes it’s putting drones on then and looking at drones for sea denial.. but it still sees the crewed warship full of weapons as the only way..
Interestingly you may remember the cargo ship it had decked out in container weapon systems.. its now decked out that same cargo ship in what appears to be portable EMALs catapults and 5th generation drones.. it’s seems the PLAN is experimenting on building a suicide strike navy out of cargo ships ( china build 1700 cargo ships a year😬)..
Yep it’s really hard to fight what would essentially be a guerrilla naval war against SSNs. But better the Russian sub turns around on the first day of the war and blats its tailing USV than the first we know of it is a salvo of cruise missiles coming over the horizon up the Channel, I think.
Wrt SSN speed, do they really run around at 30+ knots the whole time? It might be worth threatening them enough to do that anyway, they’d be audible for hundreds of km. There might also be an advantage to having a USV optimised for long ranges at high speeds as an ASW escort for carrier groups, as anything fitting on a T26 will be largely useless for that job and the other T92 concepts are nowhere near fast enough.
Why can EXPERT analysis be simply be answered with ‘No shit’
Great plan. That would be in addition to the ships that Donald Trump has just asked the UK to send to escort tankers through the Gulf.🤔
Right start a war then ask nations to take up the slack for the problem everybody except the ‘secretary of war’ and Trump saw coming🙄
Thought” The Donald” had already won the war and didn’t need the UK?
Very simple response warranted from HMG: Terribly sorry old chap (or Donald), no RN vessels are available at this time to support that mission. Suggest resubmitting your request circa the 2040s, when vessels will be available. Thank you for your interest in this matter. Cordially, HMG. 🤔😉
Donald is just rubbing it in. Might be an opporrunity to try out our new umanned mine clearance stuff? Possibly HMS Dragon. Maybe Glasgow and Venturer can do their contractor trials in the Gulf 🤣
Firmly recommend non-participation of any variety until IRGC Navy is certified to be an historical entity. Otherwise, the quicksand scene from the movie Lawrence of Arabia may become applicable.
That administration appears to have learnt nothing from RF illegal war in the Black Sea where the RF grey navy was largely defeated by a country with no navy.
Magura and Sea Baby drones have been evolved to defeat all naval defences Sea Air whatever. Thus a country that is all in on drones will expect similar success when Ukraine has proven that Tankers are fragile around the stern and do burn massively with most hydrocarbon cargoes.
It only takes a collection of burning vessel clips to ensure that no crew, owner or insurance club wants to transit the Straight of Hormuz so that energy constraints panic all sizable economies. Who has the largest economy and yet no clue how it works…
Lonpfrb,
Absolutely agree, IRGCN is currently fully capable and prepared ro wagie asymmetrical warfare in Hormuz Strait. Conventional naval defences could be overwhelmed by sheer volume of incoming munitions. Fortunately, UKR is providing advisors w/ hard won world-class asymmetric warfare experience. In addition, now that air dominance/ supremacy has been established, this will truly be the defining operational test of the efficacy of a modern air campaign employing a virtually unlimited amount of precision munitions. Prediction: Given sufficient time and resources, IRGCN will be tendered combat ineffective, or more colloquially, toast, by combined air ops. Then, allied navies can establish effective control of Persian Gulf. Attempt prematurely, significant number of allied casualties would be virtually assured.
… to wage … 🙄
That one ship Hms Dragon thst is heading to Cyprus. We had a MinevSweeper in the Gulf but someone crashed it . Instead of repairing the fibre glass hull i think they decided to just scrap it .
After 40 years service the minesweepers were due for replacement. Given the engineering innovation, not oike for like, rather uncrewed to take the men out of harms way and put the towed sensor array in a fast deployable asset.
There’s no test as good as real combat zone validation.
Learn, Improve, Deploy, Repeat.
I see the Sunday Times is reporting today that the UK might send some ‘mine hunting drones’.
That’ll test these things out in a real live environment plus their deployability at distance. And if it all works, great.
Said it a few times the cupboard is very bare
Frigates we have
Iron Duke refit
Kent refit
Portland active (but no tail)
Somerset active
Sutherland active
St Albans active
So the RN have a max of 4 frigates available and only 3 have anti submarine capability and one of these will have to be on TAPS
So our RN has 3 frigates left to pick up our world wide tasking.
We are not a credible force anymore and it is evident to our allies.
‘Donald asking us (and Europe) to contribute to help in the Strait of Hormuz might have to wait a while
MG,
Conflicts always arise at very inconvenient times for liberal democracies, usually at a nadir of defence capability. Probably a corollary of Murphy’s Laws of Combat. Difficult/impossible to adequately address issue, given a political class virtually immune to the lessons of history and logic.
Its an amazing scandal that even now is not being discussed properly by the Press or Politicians despite the Cyprus fiasco that confirms evrrything about the RN . Uk desperately needs to build more ships at home but crucially needs to place an order with a foreign ship yard to help build the critical mass up of ships asap .It sounds like we will have less than 10 functional ships for the next 10 years . Either that or buy civilian ships some how and convert ? No idea how though .
Ultimately no Naval defence has to be the UK number one priority of discussion for the nation ahead of evetything else .
Why can’t they reactivate and reimagine the Albion as a bit of a mothership for sea/air drones, helos, podded systems, hovercraft/insertion roles? Plenty of spare Artisan, 30mm around, its set up for Phalanx’s, add some CAMM, maybe some temporary containerised hangar(s). Spend a bit of money and not let it just rot on a wharf somewhere. Time is now isnt it? MRSS is ages away. Could be bloody useful. You upgraded the Argus so its not setting a precedent.
Isn’t the P8 Poseidon MPA fleet supposed to overfly the GIUK gap to give RF SSN or SSK the good news, air dropped…
After the DE UK Defence collaboration agreement, the German P8 fleet will join the RAF Lossiemouth P8 fleet so greater coverage will be in place adjacent to the Royal Norwegian P8 fleet coverage…
The UK, Canada and the European members of Nato are going to have to come up with a game plan to increase the number of ships and subs along with maritime aviation that we have available to deploy at any given time. The average Frigate sized vessel should be taking around 5 years to build (1st of class add 2 year for trials) and if a country has spear building capacity then it should be building for other Nato members to keep the flow of vessels going. Countries like Poland, Germany, Holland and France along with the UK should all have there maritime industry working 24/7 right about now to help fill the gape of the short sightedness of our political classes over the last 30 odd years.
I am no expert, just an old has-been and no one is going to give me loads of money to come up with a report stating to obvious but like a lot of people on this and site like this one we are all getting frustrated with the “all talk and no action” from the people who het a shed load of money to make decisions but never do.
Don’t know why the UK doesn’t look at having a small but useful SSKN fleet (4-6) in its fleet to work with regional allies including Canada who have or are acquiring the same. Does it all have to be “nuclear”? Like the 212CD, A26 or Korean? Not sure on costs, manufacturing location and time frame, maybe a co-sharing with allied partners?
It has been said quite a few ties on this site and many other like this one that the UK needs about 6 SSK’s to patrol the shallow waters around the UK and for SF insertion (as demonstrated a few weeks ago with the UK SF being dropped off by a German SSK) this would also free up the few SSN’s we have to do what they do best (hunt other SSN’s and SSBN’s)
The days of having 50 or even 30 escorts (aka destroyers and frigates) are long past. Technological advances in all the elements are integral to a modern warship – sensors, radars, weapons, sonar, etc, – have driven the cost of a major warship to a level that bears no resemblance to the days of T23 and T22 frigates.
That is why none of our principal similar-sized allies have even 20 escorts. That is all that is deemed necessary and anyway all that can be afforded. It still leaves ENATO with a very sizeable fleet of warships.
Yes, the RN has been run down far below its optimum size. Driven in particular by 14 years of budget cuts and false economies. However, we have 13 new frigates on the horizon plus the T45s, so will eventually see the escort fleet return to 19 ships. In the meantime, we are pretty stuffed for warship numbers.
The RN is in exactly the same boat as the other services. The RAF is at its smallest-ever size, the army is even more shrunken. It is going to take a decade or two and the increase to 3.5% of GDP to get us back to any credible level. There is no strategic military case for prioritising the RN, the top priority in any shooting war will be air superiority and sufficient boots on the ground to occupy and hold territory.
Although Japan has 49 escorts and 350 fixed wing fighters 23 subs, 4000 ton electric boats, 2 27,000 ton carriers, 2 20,000 ton amphibious vessels.. their defence budget is about 20 billion less than ours.. and nobody who know Japan has ever accused them of financial efficiency.. if you can spend money just because the Japanese will find a way…
That’s a rather strange argument the ‘expert’ is making, isn’t it? He seems to be saying that, if Atlantic Bastion is successful and finds/tracks more Russian subs than we do now, then we are going to need more ships to deal with them.
Firstly, is he right? At the moment, we need ships to do the searching and the dealing with. If Bastion can do the searching, that will save what ships we already have (or will in a few years time) huge amounts of wasted time being in the wrong place.
Secondly, that’s not an argument I would want to float with the Treasury. “So cancel Bastion and don’t find those extra subs. Then you won’t need the extra ships.” You can hear them saying it.
Isn’t the point the author is making that you may not be able to use the drone ‘motherships’ to shadow and / or prosecute the subs that have been detected without compromising the integrity of the ‘net’. Doesn’t some recent thinking suggest that we might use T31’s for the ‘mothership’ role and T26 for the sweeper hunter – killer role? Also if the surface drones can lily pad a Merlin or maybe a Proteus ( + P8 ) then you have a lot of ‘flying frigates’ to help with tracking and prosecuting. The whole thing looks really complicated and way above my pay grade. I’m sure it will take a while to work out
Those “mothership T31s” seem to be a more specced up variant of the standard T31. They’d be welcome if they’re in addition to the current 5.
And how many will get ordered? nil, no new ships ordered in 2 years, in fact apart from 23 helicoptors that are due in 2030 not much ordered in the last two years but strangly the MOD is skint, skint from day to day running cost but no orders.
Its well managed then, not once has the lack of working ships embrassed the nation and made us look crap!
No new ships ordered in two years…?
We have 2 Astutes being completed now, 4 Dreadnoughts underway, 13 frigates ordered, with the first 5 in construction..
Three more Castle MCMVs have been ordered and a second Proteus MROS. Three MRSS have just been given the go-ahesd and construction is starting.
Close to a dozen completely new unmanned systems and new weapons have been initiated and are anywhere between initial study, development and main gate approval.
That is a faster rate of naval ordering and construction than we have seen for many years. There is now no slack at all in the RN’s procurement budget, that’s it used up for the next 9 years. So I would think it most unlikely that there will be any more frigates or other vessels ordered in this DIP.
The T83 destroyers and MRSS amphibious ships will likely not fit in this phase and construction will not start this side of 2035 other than possibly the Bay replacements being pulled forward a year or so to avoid a work gap at H&W.