The Strategic Defence Review came under scrutiny in the House of Lords on 5 June, where peers pressed ministers on the future of amphibious lift and the cross-party character of the review, according to Hansard.
Earl of Minto, Conservative, highlighted the document’s sparse references to amphibious warfare, saying “there are only three mentions of the word ‘amphibious’ in the document. Given that the Government have scrapped HMS Bulwark and Albion, thereby leaving the Royal Navy with no landing platform docks and relying solely on the Bay-class ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, ships that themselves are ageing rapidly, can the Minister provide further clarity on the future of the UK’s amphibious capabilities?”
Defence minister Lord Coaker replied that the Government “is committed to amphibious capabilities” and pointed to existing RFA assets. “The noble Earl will know that we have the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships which provide that at the moment. He will know that fleet support ships will be built in Belfast to help support that. He will also know that the new First Sea Lord, with his background, will ensure that there is no shortage of amphibious capability, which will be important as well.”
Outside the exchange, officials note that the forthcoming Multi-Role Strike Ship (MRSS) programme is intended to close the gap. Up to six MRSS vessels, announced in the 2021 Defence in a Competitive Age white paper and funded in May 2024, are expected to replace the retired Albion-class landing platform docks, the three Bay-class landing ship docks and the support ship RFA Argus.
Labour peer Lord Robertson of Port Ellen urged ministers to stress the review’s bipartisan genesis. “This was not a Labour defence review. It was designed specifically to be a strategic review that would incorporate other elements of the country… I asked Sir Jeremy Quin, a former Conservative Minister for defence procurement, to be part of our team… This report is not simply about warships and missiles. It is about reforming the whole way in which we deliver defence… Defence expenditure is the premium we spend for an insurance policy, not only for the current generation but for generations to come.”
Responding to further questions on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, Lord Coaker said “the long-running dispute with respect to pay was resolved as part of our attempts to ensure that the RFA was properly supported and its personnel properly respected and given the pay that they deserve.”
On the possibility of supplementing the fleet with commercial vessels he added “you would do that in situations where it was safe to do so — but that would be augmenting the RFA, not replacing it… Those sorts of imaginative solutions… will give us the capacity and capability that we need.”
Amongst the sounds of raucous snoring, a Peer was heard to ask, “How would we cope with a Peer on Peer situation” ?
The answer is held pending several committee reviews.
now we’ll have two whopping great assault ships laying around why don’t we offer them to Egypt in exchange for one of the two mistrals that never go to sea,?
They’ve been sold to Brazil for a song.
£3 billion capability sold for £27 million.
We don’t need them, they are defunct apparently.
We won’t be undertaking large scale amphibious landings. Yet China, USN and many other countries are still building and commissioning LPDs. Why? Because they have utility. An LCU could be launched from the ship in calmish seas out to a range of upto 50-60 miles. As long as air superiority is in place the LCUs carrying troops would be able to land and raid then withdraw.
Also an LPD tends to have a reasonable helicopter flight deck and can be used as a spring board for heavy airborne lift.
I personally think the RN needs to invest in a couple of LPHDs maybe of the Trieste or Mistral or Canberra design. 20,000-25,000 tons and lift capacity of a RM commando unit.
An LPHD would also double up as a useful drone, auxillary and escort carrier.
now we’ll have two whopping great assault ships laying around why don’t we offer them to Egypt in exchange for one of the two mistrals that never go to sea,? or am I just talking cr*p?
Albion and Bulwark have been sold off for a song.
Brazil will no doubt keep them both in active service for the next 40 years.
Slightly worrying that Lord Coaker appears not to understand the difference between the Fleet Solid Support ships being built in Belfast, with no Amphibious capabilities, and the entirely separate MRSS project that has yet to agree a design let alone a builder!
Too many SSS I expect.
I see they are still pretending that the Bays provide the same level of Amphibious capability, from lift to C3, as the LPDs.
A Bay is as vulnerable as an Albion, maybe more, and with only part of it’s capabilities.
The loss of or gapping of capabilities hasn’t seemed to be seen as an issue for a while and simply gets ignored, as you already know with Warrior being replaced by wheeled boxer without a turret despite there being options for one, I’m sure you can think of many other areas capability has been lost or gapped like it’s no big deal.
Considering the loss of the Albions I’ve not seen anything on the JEF since the review, perhaps they are hoping people forget about that commitment until MRSS, just like the grand plans for troops in Ukraine which seem to have quietly disappeared now reality has set in.
Precisely.
You could send an Albion into places you wouldn’t dream of sending a Bay.
To these buffoons it is a big grey box that floats.
I don’t really buy the ‘we will never do a contested beach landing’…..what level is contested? A machine gun nest? A bloke with an RPG? You can’t give up in the face of dealable with issues. You find solutions like drones taking out the machine gun nest with NSM backup.
It is totally different if you have a dug in army with M270 type systems and 10s of shoulder launch.
But there are plenty of scenarios where you’d have marginal opposition that can be dealt with at an acceptable level of risk. It is all down to recon…
‘Contested’ would be a landing where there is continuous enemy fire at our amphibious forces. A bloke with an RPG or machine gun next obvious don’t count and would be obliterated by air assets before the landing begins.
A dug in enemy army modern weaponry is a definite no-no. Even if the landing was a success, the casualty count would be so high that the units that did the initial assault and secured the beach would be combat ineffective and would immediately require replacing. Meanwhile the public back home would be demanding the heads of the military and politicians who thought it a good idea.
From the amphibious exercise undertaken last week Lyme Bay was damaged by a French landing craft during the exercise and is now having emergency repairs.
In lively conditions the use of the crane to launch craft instead of davits (on Albions) was too dangerous to be undertaken.
The Bays are not amphibious warships but secondary logistic ships.
We still have the best amphibious troops on the planet but now with no credible/reliable method of deployment.
May as well say cars don’t need steering wheels as they already have 4 other wheels. The Albions should not be lost without direct replacement. Moe like a 50% cut in amphibious capability which als does an awful lot else. We’re making dangerous times even more dangerous by cutting our capabilities & giving less deterence.
If the multi role strike ships don’t have embarked helicopters & only a flight deck then the QE class carriers will still need to operate with the amphibious ships for cross decking meaning that the carriers will be placed closer to the threat and aren’t operating in their primary role as fleet carriers. It would make far more sense to have a couple of large Mistral or Canberra type LHD than 6 little MRSS that have no embarked air wing.
Well, on the one hand we hear that the number of RN frigates and destroyers is going to increase from 19 to 25 and on the other hand we read that there won’t be any more type 31s and Atlantic Bastion will rely mostly on drones; so don’t hold your breath for more T26. There are to be 6 MRSS and Babcock will need orders to follow on from T31. Put all that together and what I come up with is MRSS = Absalon or similar; a multi-role ‘strike frigate’ based on the T31 Arrowhead hull. Absalon has a 5in gun, ESSM missiles, a hangar for 2 Merlins, an amphibious capability to land and support a company. Heavy vehicles e.g. MBT would need the Absalon to offload via its side loading opening at a port.
I don’t think 120 RMs plus kit and heavy vehicles including MBTs even on a 8,000t + frigate is going to work. For that type of capability you need something with a well deck for its added flexibility so a ship of 12,000t+ is required and if you want to embark 2-3 helicopters and carry enough stores for more than a couple of days then it needs to be bigger probably approaching 18,000t.
Morning, you are right in what you say: maybe my reading of the runes is wrong. As soon as you accept the need for a well deck the game changes and as you say, to be meaningful the tonnage increases to Bay class / LPD levels. What is giving me brain ache is I can’t see us affording 6 large resilient warships of that type, which will need designing from scratch. BAE have floated their ‘adaptable strike frigate’. This is from their web site.
“The Adaptable Strike Frigate is a multi-mission warship optimised for littoral strike and lethality. Efficiently delivered by an adaptable, system of systems capability underpinned by credible modularity and through integration and exploitation of uncrewed assets”. No mention there of the amphibious word, but the BAE graphic gives nothing away regarding a well deck or tonnage.
If you look at all our most recent amphibious vessels including HMS Ocean then the only two that were built to full warship standards were the Albions so I agree there is no way are getting 6 large warships. I hope we will get 3 and the others will likely be simpler Bay type vessels, which have been fantastic value for money.
The design of the 3 MRSS is still up for grabs in my mind but I cannot get away from an LPD type vessel with a hangar and as for strike type vessels then I am confused by our new amphibious doctrine. If all we are going to do is raiding then you require speed, stealth and self defence capabilities. If you add strike capability then that suggests offensive armament for use in a contested environment. Do we actually envisage attacking/raiding a hostile shore with a maximum of a company of Bootnecks to do this? The attacking force is both too large for raiding and too small for anything more substantial.
A raid would better carried by one or two type 31 Frigates with small boats and helicopters but that will not secure a beachhead and deliver heavy vehicles.
For me the doctrine is confused and that no clear design requirements have been made available suggests the RM are as well.
LHDs are more expensive, crew heavy and require an air wing
Or have both? 4-6 MRSS and 1-2 LHDs?
Agree there is no substitute for the capabilities provided by a through deck LHD with an air wing and well deck. Without this kind of capability, it won’t matter if the Royal Marines are the best trained amphibious force in the world, their operational utility will be severely constrained. It’s like owning a flash sports car but not being able to afford the fuel to go anywhere.
Between them the RANs two LHDs and single Bay class can lift 2,350 troops plus heavy equipment (MBT, SPH, HIMARS, Boxer, IFV) with a helo air wing – around half of the Royal Marines strength in a single operation.
Australia is building 18 new Landing Craft Medium (first deliveries in 2026) and 8 new 3,900 tonne Landing Craft Heavy (first steel cutting for the Damen design in 2026).
This will provide the ADF with a flexible amphibious force of 29 vessels with a total tonnage of more than 108,000 tonnes capable of lifting 4,800 troops plus their heavy equipment.
While it has been tailored for Australia’s strategic challenges and operations in the Pacific, specifically the island archipelagos to our north, it’s a model the UK could consider.
Totally agree
Your above point on amphibious doctrine is well taken. I note recent exercise of the Combined Joint Expeditionary Force on the Devon beaches. The wiki entry on the CJEF suggests capabilities and roles.
What amphibioius capability?
They are not even out option studies yet. No serious design work has been undertaken and there is no spare shipbuilding capacity in the country, nor will there be for the medium term. So the first MRSS is at best a decade away.
Yes? They have said like 2033-35
And let me know when Elvis gets here!
I have a theory that if you gave the MOD just two more of everything (apart from cv), we’d be in a fairly comfortable place.
2 more Type 45
2 more Type 26
2 more Type 31
2 more Bay
2 more Astute
2 more P8
2 more E7 (Okay, in this case 4 more)
2 more Rivets
2 more C17
2 more A400M
2 more Voyager
You get the drift. Perhaps the question for the Govt moving forward should be “is 2 more really beyond our reach?”
Couple of those we cannot or will not do 2 more of
I was making the case for a change of thinking moving forward as we try to build strength, not so much to re-open production lines for legacy equipment.
If we had acquired just two more when the opportunity was in front of us, we’d be in a much stronger position right now, and perhaps PoW wouldn’t be sailing around the world with, ironically – just two UK escorts.
You won’t get two more 45, the production line is closed. But they need to accelerate the type 83.
You might get two more type 26s in fact given the increase threat to our subsea infrastructure and policing the Greenland / UK gap. It is a must.
More type 31 is possible but their armament fit needs to be brought up to high end war fighting .
Two more bats, doable but not sure if needed
Two more pastures, the assembly line is closed. No capacity until the Dreadnaughts are nearing completion. By which time hopefully Barrow in Furnace facilities and resource needs to be greatly upgraded. Best you can hope for is accelerated AUKUS delivery,
The aircraft especially the high end intelligence gathering aircraft is a must especially with our less than reliable allies across the pond,
Yep, the opportunity has long passed for a lot of it. My intent really was to demonstrate that “just two more” dramatically improves the MOD’s capacity to meet it’s commitments. I was making the case for a change of thinking moving forward as we try to build strength, not so much to re-open production lines for legacy equipment.
As you point out though, the opportunity it still there for some things such as T31.
I actually agree Jay.
Small increments by two more in several of that list would be of enormous help.
Or their equivalents, I should add, as the likes of Astute, T45, C17 not longer possible, unless we bought 2nd hand C17s.
Project “Noah’s Ark”.
Hah! Indeed!
The Type 31 launched 2 by 2 huzza! huzza!…
five more T31.
HMG will just say it costs 2 much.
But we need to do this & more besides. T45 could be done by doing a T26/31 equipped & armed for area air/ballistic defence. Maybe stretched a bit if necessary.
Only words and words, I believe nothing about increasing capabilities.
As cannot get extra T-45’s lets have 6 more T-31 the arrowhead design can take upto 80? SAM’s of various type, so buy the mass, 1 x QE, 1 x T45, 2 X t26, and 2 x T-31 AAW (the T-45 can provide the control, the T-31’s just give it more shots, also having 2 additional Merlins increases ASW