Government have ‘no plans’ to send Royal Marines to protect shipping

A common misconception sadly spread by the press, the assuming and some defence publications/journals.

For an amphibious op we can routinely deploy 1 Commando Group. That is a single Commando with bits of 3 Commando Brigade attached.

42 Commando the Maritime Ops Commando will also have elements on ships, and of course the SBS.

In war of course the gloves are off, but a complete Commando Brigade is not going to be deployed in an amphibious operation.

I think the last time it did was in Helmand on dry land and it was heavily augmented by army units.

You’re correct the corps of some 7000 RM is spread amongst a whole host of organisations, from tri service to MoD.

I dunno man think you are downplaying our ability ,I believe we can more or less deploy a brigade between 40 42 45 commando Which is is not really token , name another country other than US that can? TheRN have learnt lessons of mothballing the Albion’s that it costs a lot to reactivate so the 2nd ship is in a far more deployable state and much quicker to reactivate than before. Most importantly we have experience and have actually conducted amphibious warfare demonstrated in Falklands with 2 far less capable LPD’s intrepid and fearless. So we can pack a punch, highly unlikely ever the need to need an amphibious force in more than 1 place at a time. Only US can do that.

We aren’t comparing like for like here. If it was a land warfare like Iraq/Afgan, then raw number of soldiers mean way more than anything else, but here we are talking effectively counter piracy warfare. There are thousands of ships going through the area and it is a big area, any one of them is a potential target. Having a single frigate in the area and/or an albion would not be enough to spread of capability. To do anything vaguely effective we would need to move dozens of ships into the region to host the marines and that is just not feasible with the size of the navy.

Falklands is also not a fair comparison as it was an assault on a fixed and known location, where we could funnel troops into it, here we are talking a huge area.

A better comparison is the counter piracy patrols back in the 1800s, where there was hundreds and hundreds of royal navy ships working on the task.

We could position marines on the cargo ships themselves but then they would rapidly come too spread out and at risk

Yeah I’m not overly disagreeing with anything you’ve said , just pointing out we are not really all that bad at operating at sea whether war or counter piracy as ever it’s a test of political will more than anything

I feel a decision needs to be made sooner or later to start working a way of having both top end ships for something like the falklands and lower end ships that are effectively mother ships for marines/helicopters.

This needs to be done somehow without requiring more sailors which i think can only be done by splitting crews from platforms.

The challenge is the military are no doubt scared politics will come into play and their cheaper assets will be span as replacements rather than supplements for the main assets. It is also a change in how the navy thinks.

The carriers were a big mistake as they are a solution to yesterdays problems not today’s, but we need to find a way to work around them. In theory they can be used as a central helicopter /surveillance platform supporting a number of lighter ships.

We massively overpaid for the batch 2 rivers, but in theory they are the answer to a lot of problems, they just lack a hanger, which could be partially solved by the carriers. 10 or 20 of these each and a marine unit embarked could make a decent asymmetric warfare solution.

The risk is that if we get it wrong and we need top end gear, it could be a lethal mistake.

“and lower end ships that are effectively mother ships for marines/helicopters.”

The LSS.

Partially yes, but based on the news story they are still thinking big and expansive, making numbers a problem.