The Earl of Minto recognised the shortfall of warships in the Royal Navy.
During a session addressing enquiries about historical allegations of misconduct within the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, commonly known as the Red Arrows, the Earl said:
His statement was in response to a pointed query from Labour peer Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord. Lord West reminisced about his role in a historic decision from 45 years ago when he advocated for the inclusion of women in the Royal Navy.
“45 years ago I did the study into whether women should serve at sea in the Royal Navy, and I said they should, and I think it has worked in fact very, very well, although there were often people against it at the time,” Lord West noted.
However, Lord West then underscored the substantial reduction in the Navy’s combat vessels, noting a decline from 55 destroyers and frigates during his tenure to the current count of 16. “Does the minister feel that that is too few?” he inquired.
“Yes, I do think that is too few. I think everybody knows that,” remarked the Earl of Minto, acknowledging the concerns about the current fleet of frigates and destroyers.
Good Evening!
I know Labour have just got into power but let’s face it if they have done their homework in Opposition they should know the desperate situation the services are in.
Commit now to 3% at least even better 4% like Poland. The services need building up immediately! It’s no use pumping money in to our social services when the Russians are knocking on our door!
However questions should be officially asked as to why our services have been weakend to such a sorry state by the last Government and those before it!
Hoping things will improve quickly!
Nick
Let us see
Action speaks louder than words
At least in the election and now everyone is speaking about it…
Agree. Defence is and always should be the first priority. Ask the people of Ukraine.
Healey already said tough decisions need to be made
Quoting Starmer, it looks like the retreat to Europe will happen.
Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington on Wednesday, he also signalled that helping NATO defend Europe from Russian aggression will be deemed a higher priority than sending military ships, jets and soldiers on exercises to Asia
And the new strategy is missing the point of NATO’s main enemy has allies in the Far East like DPRK, smuggling warpons to potentially be use in Europe.
The reality is if Russia wants to trade weapons with NK or China there’s nothing NATO can do.
It’s not just the Navy that’s undermanned, pivoting to Europe there’s an obvious need of Army and RAF.
Factor in a less than stable USA foreign policy, and suddenly the British Armed Forces look even smaller
How is it a retreat to Europe? We have a small armed forces and we have a real threat to our biggest trading partner, spreading our resources so thinly doesn’t help anyone. It the equivalent of saying the pivot to the east was a retreat from Europe, which admittedly the US was blamed for.
OK not a retreat. Europe has always been the main focus but if we don’t train in Asia Pacific how would we ever fight there? So effectively we retreating from any future conflict in that region.
The reality is there’s no threat to EU from Russia. Russia can’t defeat Ukraine and would resort to tactical nukes to hold off western Europe if conflict broke out, which means it’s effectively game over for us all or a ceasefire followed by a cold war.
The Europe tilt is for 2 reasons, to bargain with the EU and to just do the opposite of the Tories. Fairly obvious really.
Whilst I get your point but what is the realistic threat in the Asia pacific region? Almost none of our trade comes from there outside fron China and the UK isn’t going to war with China unless we want to return to the stone age
The obvious one is Taiwan but even the US doesn’t have to get embroiled there it’s a political decision to intervene based on supporting democracy. North Korea is a bit of a wild card but China would certainly back them, the last war was effectively US fighting China. South China sea again freedom of navigation and standing up to belligerence.
The reason why we would get involved there is because we want to support freedom and democracy or at least support the US in that. Its why we’re supporting Ukraine. Unless of course we’re going to be selective on that subject. In which case why bother at all, picking and choosing based on location wouldn’t look particularly good on the world stage or send an effective message.
Image this phone rings, our PM picks up. “Whats that your being invaded, um, where are you again… ah I see well you’ve got the wrong number for support of freedom and democracy we don’t cover your area. I’ll given you the Australian PMs number” 😀
as should always have been
No chance Labour will improve funding for defence. The Tories have already left the UK treasury in a right mess and does anyone really believe that Labour are going to prioritise defence over trying to plug the gaps in the NHS, welfare and overseas aid budget?
Prioritise no, but if they deliver on their promise to close tax loop holes and go after Torry corruption fraud, then money will be available. Maybe not enough but more than now. They also plan to put money into investments that will hopefully deliver growth to the country rather than pulling it all like the recent government.
Time will tell, it’s too early to know if just talk to win an election or if they will deliver.
Any new goverment, no matter the party or country, first job is to make sure they blame the previous government for everything and really push the point, so if they fix it they have an achievement to talk about at the next election and if they don’t they just state they were unable to fix tbe issues causes by the previous government. Just politics.
We will see in 4-5 years when we go back to vote if the country and ourselves individuallt is better off or not, including defence.
can’t see anything different happening. keir stammer won’t have realised how pathetic we are in production of what we need, there’ll be no new shipyards and we’ll keep on retiring ships earlier than we need to.
If everyone knows that, perhaps the new government will actually do something about it? (Not holding my breath.)
Really. I mean, really. Two hundred thousand pounds to the genius who found this mystery problem out. It’s beyond.
Sorry, for the benefit of outsiders, who is the current Earl of Minto, and more importantly, does he have a significant role in UK defence policy?
He’s Sunak’s former Defence Minister in the Lords having taken over from Baroness Goldie about a year back until last week.
When this exchange took place several months ago, the Earl had a significant role in Defence, and now, unless the Labour government has decided to appoint former Tory Ministers and I hadn’t noticed, he doesn’t.
Gilbert Timothy George Lariston Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound. Google it.
In a word no, the former CEO of Paperchase. A failed Conservative candidate, even before the recent election, he was raised to the Lords for coming second in a by-election.
He served a few months as Minister of State in the Department for Business and Trade and then a bit of time as Minister of State for Defence. Then he lost that job….
Maybe I a paraphrase a little.
I would assume also a tory donor. The Lords badly needs reform.
Let’s not forget what the defence white paper in 1998 said was the minimum requirement for a world in which NATO was no longer preparing for a stray attack.
2 carriers
1 helicopter landing ship
2 landing platform docks
11 AAW destroyers
21 ASW frigates…
Essentially every cut since then has been to balance the books while taking a risk with national security…
Labour cutting to 24 was bonkers..with the planning around 6 destroyers, 10 C 1 large ASW escorts and 8 middle weight C2 escorts far to little. And their slow getting upto the point of recapitalisation of the frigates was stupid.
but the 2010 review at the same time Putin started invading random countries around 2010 while china stated it’s now owned everything inside the nine dash line move ever further from the levels of the 1998 white paper moved from stupid to insanity.
Its not going to happen, but in reality we need 30+ escorts as a minimum…we are facing a threat as great as the Soviet Union without even the ambition to get the min standard we set for a peacetime world.
and who watch was some of those cuts carried out, non other than Lord West
The same review also stated that we should be able to fight one large and one small war concurrently…or two medium sized deployments. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but they definitely put that to the test.
We saw in 2010 how dangerously easy it for a government to decide almost on impulse to scrap or sell warships – Ark Royal was gone within weeks and the 4 T22B3’s only survived for a few months because they were needed off Libya. Conversely if the government decided today that an extra 4 frigates were needed, it will be the early 2030’s at best before they entered service. It’s similar for sailors – over 3000 highly experienced officers and ratings (including dozens of ex-Sea Harrier pilots) were crazily made redundant between 2011 and 2013, by the 2015 the RN was in desperate straits due to the resulting lack of trained manpower as it started to crew the QEC, and the situation is still nearly as bad a decade later. The only reason it’s not quite so bad is because of the 1 LPH, 4 frigates, 10(?) MCMV’s and 2 survey ships that have been decommissioned without replacement since 2015, plus both LPD’s being placed in reserve. The FAA and CHF have of course also been significantly downsized since 2015. As for the RFA – the least said the better. The plan to effectively replace commissioned RN ships with auxiliaries does not seem to be going well.
If the focus is now on NATO ( whatever that means) then maybe its a chance to accept we aren’t a major land power and arguably have always had a smaller army comp to Europe. Moderate sized armour, and lots of long range fires could be our contribution.
Instead. Do what we do well, more shops and ability to fight in the high North and reinforce the Scandinavian flank.
Even with 2.5 % we can’t do everything but a well equipped fleet centered around a carrier with F35 and FCAS missiles would cause havoc for the Russian Units.
Carriers what to bob around off the coast? Carriers come into their own 1000s of miles away not 100s. Carriers completely constraints what we can do with escorts when we can pretty much lauch aircraft from any base in Europe. We can crew 7 frigates to one carrier which will be far more useful to protect UK and EU infrastructure than a carrier group. More subs would be better to harass Russian ships. If we’re at the point where we need the carrier to support an amphibious landing it means Europe has fallen and we’re buggered!!!
If it all goes wrong key will be the fight in the high north and smashing the Barents, Kara sea bastions, to do that you need naval forces that are focused around a strong carrier battlegroup. The US will not want to be taking carriers from the Pacific for Europes high north..so that means we need carriers for a European war not just for the Indio Pacific.
For a fight at sea, subs are still a better option than a carrier. Carrier is for striking land target’s we have very limited options to stike vessels from a carrier. I know it’s an emotive subject but there’s no real need for carriers to secure European defence. There’s simply better options be it more frigates, p8s or subs, which would give us a more flexible force for opperating closer to home without tieing up resources to escort a carrier around.
To be honest we could run the carriers in the same way as we run the Amphibious vessels…one operational at a time…worked for the Albion’s….
It’s pretty much what’s happening anyway through issues with the carriers rather than design.
That’s always been the intention
No it’s not. We have two commissioned and in service to ensure one is available at all time. This would moving to the same way we manage the albions. In which one of the carriers would be completely uncrewed at all times and placed in reserve at extended readiness..this would mean that standard maintenance cycles and emergency maintenance would not have the second ship to cover as it takes around a years refit to bring a ship out of extended readiness….so it would reduce availability….but not as much as only having one carrier as the extended readiness ship comes out and takes over when the other ship goes for its planned refits and deep maintenance… it saves a lot of money for some reduced availability..it costs 96million to run each carrier…putting it in extended readiness would cost around .5% of this…say £500,000. So that’s a saving almost £100 million a year….but we probably only have a carrier available for maybe around 80% of the time.
The carrier enables sea control in the Northern Atlantic, air and land power is important but there is definitely a role for a carrier too. One carrier can cover a n awful lot more area than frigates or destroyers which ultimately are escorts. As we’ve seen in the Red Sea not all of Britain’s threats are in Europe. The most urgent requirement currently is for thr MRSS’s to be built already 20+years in the making… and I agree we need more subs too.
In other breaking news Pope turns out to be Catholic and bears sometimes defecate in the woods…
NDG
It shouldn’t be too difficult a decision to have some follow on orders for more T26 & T31, both in build and costed, for whatever is the desired requirement. Need to act! Not sure if the new subs can be brought forward.
Hi Quentin,
Very sensible suggestion there, mate.
I’ve said for a while now, scrap T32, and buy more T31 possibly a stretched version that Babcock have already done some work on. Another batch of T26, say 12 xT26 and 8 x T31 with may 4x T31stretch.
That would create an issue around where we would build the replacement destroyer, but I fear that is going to be delayed as there does seem to be no sense of urgency around that program. Always a bad sign…
Cheers CR
Hi CR, Like you biggish numbers! Yes, many of us here are saying the same or similar. We’ll \ have to wait and see what eventuates with new government but at least the T23 & T45s are getting fixed up and or upgraded and the T26 &T31s are emerging. Really hope the UK get the Norwegian T26 order.
What’s the schedule on the last two Astutes? Pity there couldn’t have been an eighth there too!
To be honest mate, even my ‘biggish’ numbers are too small, especially if the US goes all isolationist.
Another article on here highlights that even the USN is short of escorts as T45 class destroy HMS Duncan was the only escort for the USN Ready Amphibious Ready Group in the Eastern Mediterranean. NATO navies in general are short of escorts which means there is no fall back option in the event of war. As a result NATO will suffer losses as merchant ships – big ones at that – will be easy targets for any hostile sub that gets through the GIUK gap… Worse we don’t have the industrial base to crash build a new fleet and that goes for the rest of NATO as well, especially around SSN’s. There was much comment around AUKUS that the USN is struggling to get enough SSN’s to meet its own needs let alone transfer any to the RAN.
As for the last two Astute’s, Agamemnon is due in the water this year, and the final boat is due to float in ’26, according to Wikipedia, hopefully…
Cheers CR
They could commit to a few T31s, wouldn’t break the bank, if more AAW coverage is required and quickly. It won’t be a T45 but surely good enough with 4 MK41s, maybe 2 more forward, CAMM, CAMM-ER/MR, 57/40mm. And a bit of a rant of mine.. if they put MK41s and or CAMM side silos on the T45s they can get the CAMM count to be double to triple the 24 they’re currently planning. Thats the equivalent of a T32 CAMM load plus extra, so basically another ship+! It’s not outside the box just better box thinking!
I agree.
However, I don’t think that will happen during build, but it could, in part at least, be delivered during refits which is the plan for the MK41’s that have been talked about to date.
If it was me walking to government then I would ask Babcock 2 questions. First, what’s the delay on HMS Venturer, secondly, how mature is their stretched version of Arrowhead?
First question would come with a ‘get a grip’ message second question would be nice reward if you get back on schedule…
With two frigate factories soon to be in operation Babcock need to understand that competition cuts both ways and they seem to be dropping the ball somewhat with HMS Venturer. They are also gone very quiet of late which as set my spidy senses tingling…
Going back to your point about Norway buying T26. I would want to know, in detail, what the impact on the RN’s delivery schedule would be as some on here have suggested that Norway gets it’s frigates built overseas because of the high labour costs at home yards.
So lets say Norway orders 4, which would be great news, I would be asking big questions of BAE Systems about capacity. From what I have read the original plan for the T26 was to consolidate at Scotstoun before Cameron cut the T26 to just 8 ships. So given I would be interested in buying 2 to 4 more for the RN in the medium term and we are assuming Norway will order 4 there would be a potential for serious delays in accepting the T26 into RN service. As I would not want to discourage the Norwegians from buying the T26, I would be looking to BAE Systems to increase capacity to minimise delays, perhaps with additional facilities at Scotstoun as presumably there is still space for more development of that site.
If it was me making the decisions, and obviously it ain’t, long term I would be looking to achieve a drum beat of one frigate every 9 months or thereabouts and keeping each ship in service for about 20 years (with a design life of 30 years so we can extend them if we need to ‘surge’ the size of the fleet or get a good(ish) price on the second hand market). Over 20 years that is a frigate fleet of about 26 ships.
We would need to think about T83 as well..!
I think this is a minimum number of frigates that we need because whether we are NATO focused or not our supply chains are global, but our politicians like to ignore such realities…
Cheers CR
We have maxed out the UK credit card. So we do need to spend more on defence to show intent to Russia, but this has be alongside with the rest of NATO whom some have come late to the party.
The point of a defence policy is to have platforms available for any future eventuality. Failed. Two carrier strike groups will not protect UK.
Rather, the path to defence capability now (when we need it) is not to build a fleet for 2035, but build an AI based autonomous array of lethal ordnance never seen before (and that our adversaries have no resistance capabilities for).
They should be a real focus on the remainder of this decade first. Stuff is happening right now that could warm up more before the 2030s. Hopefully the RN fleet that is getting fixed, upgraded or built now all becomes available at its soonest. New government, new eyes, new energy and some action, please!
Lord West….🙄
👍
Yes Mr West, it is too few, and it’s also down to your actions as a defence chief in cheerleading and supporting those reductions. You got handsomely rewarded for it with your lifetime peerage.
This is news? Isn’t it a bit odd reporting on something from January without saying that’s when it happened.
Yep, they used to blame atmospherics. 😁. Donno what now
🙃🕳️
Yeh, remember West when he was a Subby. 🙄. Wasn’t impressed then nor now. But we were all aware he was “for” grandiose events laterly. Ink for the histrionics, some say. Doesn’t stop the loss of fighting ships though. 😒🙁🕳️.
The RN has too few warships … no shit Sherlock
And who’s fault is that?
Governments waste so much. We should be ready for a war and we aren’t. to build the Fleet to where it should be will take at least 10 years. We need drones over and under the sea in numbers.
Did these ministers previously serve in the ministry of stating the obvious.
This isn’t hard to fix. We need new ships more than we need new ship projects.
The quick answer is to extend production of the existing programmes. Most likely Type 31.
8x Type 26 will probably do but the Type 45 replacement has to go from 6 to 8 to ensure more availability. We will need to decomplicate the Type 83 to reduce development time and reduce project cost. Buy the best off the shelf radar and the same for missiles.
Ship manning is a secondary concern. The RAF have a pool of aircraft larger than their deployable squadron strength. This ensures that operational squadrons are always near full strength. I see no issues with having a pool of 8 warships but only having full crew for 6. If necessary the remaining ships can operate close to home with smaller crews back-filled with reservists. This will improve training and hopefully increase the number of reservists signing on full-time.
This will not work, unmanned ships will degrade very quickly. They cannot sit alongside. It takes years to build the crew for a new ship. They cannot operate with ‘smaller crews’ at least not effectively or safely. We will have to make do with what we have until the middle 2030’s, as someone said tread carefully.
Great
Labour decided to build 6 x T45 not 12 as a like for like swap from T42 now they think there are not enough ships
It’s depressing
The reason the navy has so few ships is purely down to the appalling cost and man power demands of the two white elephant aircraft carriers and their ridiculously expensive F35 aircraft. Mothballing or selling them would provide the means for a squadron of new all purpose frigates and destroyers and support ships and the crews to man them.
Without the carriers the navy looses a huge amount of capability, plus you might as well say goodbye to the Falklands in any future war.
All our forces are now so small that losses would be irreparable. Lose a frigate, take 7/8 years to replace it. Lose an F35, join the LM queue. Lose an MBT, oops, we haven’t got any more.
In reality, while better planning and procurement would help, only a big increase in funding,now, could make a real difference, provided it was spent wisely.
And that isn’t going to happen. With so many re equipment programmes not reaching FOC until 2030, we need to tread very carefully for the next few years.
who woke him up?
Lol…. 😂
I believe the Royal Navy had a saying in World War II about the unpreparedness of Britain when the war began. “God and the Navy we adore, When danger threatens and not before.” From Douglas Reeman’s book, SUNSET. The American Navy took more ships out of service this year than it accepted. You can’t hope to win a naval war with statistics like that.
What gets my goat here is Lord West reduced the FF/DD fleet to 24 not 55. In addition his Government depleted the RN thanks to funding Gulf War II and the subsequent time spent peace -keeping in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes the RN has been too short of surface ships and Submarines since 1993! That’s 4 years of Major, 11 of Blair, 3 of Brown and the rest the mixed bag of Conservatives from 2010 to this year. The basic fact is, under investment and incompetence by all!
As a real life outline, two years ago we approached the Ministry to order 32 midsize 10,000 dwt merchant ships to be built from the 4 UK yards, but months later were told this was too advanced for UK shipbuilding.
You will recall at the time the UK launched, with great fanfare, a dumb barge.
Did one of the readers below talk about a new military fleet by 2035??