The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the purchase of two Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance ships to protect the UK’s critical national undersea infrastructure has been brought forward.
The two Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance (MROS) ships will be operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and will be tasked with protecting subsea cables and pipelines. The first of these ships will be handed over in January 2023, several months ahead of schedule.
“The increasing commercialisation of the seabed for energy and communications purposes has resulted in increased opportunities for adversaries to hold Western subsea critical national infrastructure at risk. The vessels will be adaptable, and able to provide a range of capabilities, such as operating remote and autonomous offboard systems for underwater surveillance and seabed warfare.”
Speaking in the House of Commons, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:
“In the face of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s reckless disregard of international arrangements designed to keep world order, it is right that we prioritise delivering capabilities which safeguard our national infrastructure.
To effectively address the current and future threats, we will now invest in MROS ships that protect sensitive Defence infrastructure, and civil infrastructure, to improve our ability to detect threats to the seabed and cables. I have also therefore directed the termination of the National Flagship competition with immediate effect to bring forward the first MROS ship in its place and I shall make further announcements on our continued Naval investment in the coming weeks.”
In light of this, the National Flagship programme has been suspended to prioritise delivery of the vital MROS capability.
Rear Admiral Rex Cox, CEO of the National Shipbuilding Office said:
“The National Flagship project showcased the talent of the UK’s maritime industry and I am grateful to all those bidders who took part. The willingness to embrace modern design and production practices with a focus on green innovation embodies the essence of the National Shipbuilding Strategy Refresh. This contemporary approach to shipbuilding and design will be fundamental to the success of the future shipbuilding pipeline.”
Good news. But is two enough?
Do we think they will pull RFA Diligence out of retirement, wasn’t she a support ship for the oil rigs back in the day?
It’s a derelict wreck
It won’t just be our two. Given our position geographically we are front line on this but the other nations in NATO will have their own contribution
Just now a good investment would be the ability to re route communication traffic so if one cable is hit traffic can be rerouted easily. That is something nato/EU would be good at organising.
Rerouting of cable traffic is already done by the telecoms industry for load-balancing and hot fail-over. Rerouting is easily done, has to be as there’s a large number of accidental breakages every year.
Yes, one only has to look at the speed with which the French cable cut in the Mediterranean was dealt with last week. To a certain extent the threat is being played up on the data cables. There are a lot of them, they get cut frequently by accident and data can be rerouted to other cables or satellites.
Gas and electricity interconectors is a different story. There are not so many at the moment but there numbers will dramatically increase in the next decade.
Agree Jim its our gas and electric connectors that are most at risk. I can see Russia clandestine activity against those causing problems especially if they are mysteriously damaged mid-winter. I think the January 2023 date is urgently needing to be met. We need these ships in service asap. If only to free up ASW frigates to pursue military targets.
Yes, in fact the big worry on data cables are Egypt and near Singapore as due to geography they concentrate in these areas. As the cables just lie on the sea bed a ship dragging an anchor will easily slice a cable. If the gas or oil interconnectors between the U.K. and Europe went down them there would be serious issues:- • We buy a lot of our gas from Norway. • We pump a lot of gas shipped here as LNG to Europe as we have more facilities unload the tankers and regassify it compared to continental Europe. •… Read more »
Come on, it’s common sense that they already do that.
Oh yes I would of assumed the already do that. But the way Shetland was cut of recently because of 2 cables going down shows that it’s not robust enough. There needs to be redundancy in the system. Whether that’s more cables, satellites, repair ships.
If I remember rightly the plan was for two or three, with the first one being a conversion of an off the shelf vessel. However, it seems things have moved on since then with two off the shelf vessels being purchased for conversion.
Another point to note is that the RFA is to crew these vessels. The RFA is struggling to recruit enough people for its existing fleet. I wonder how they are going to square that circle?
Cheers CR
What are the things causing the RFA problems in recruitment personnel?
As a nihilistic person, I think it’s down to low morale and don’t want to serve government incompetence. I mean, Wave Ruler has been laid up at Seaforth Docks for a while.
Given that the RN is getting the biggest build up in thirty years why would there be low morale and why is the government that’s overseeing the build up incompetent? Unless of course your making a political point. Personally I think two more ships is good news.
I’m talking about low morale in the population.
Theres many worse off than those that live in the UK. The World is suffering not just us and most are in real dire straights. Buck up UK life has been too soft for most here.
Just because a nation has its own internal issues, doesn’t mean they should ignore them because others have issues that are beyond our control. Hey, homeless, suicidal people, just buck up.
The RFA has struggled for years as they are now classed as Civil Servants and lost some of their sea going perks that merchant marine have. Also the current generation do not want to be away form home for such long stretches of time. Need a better package for them. But these vessels should not be RFA manned but RN manned as they will not require large crews and now we are getting shot of the plastic fleet the RN should have some manpower that can man these in a good watch keeper system meaning they are at sea for… Read more »
Yes., I did wonder about the RFA crewing, particularly with a good number of the people being specialists operating auto subs etc. certainly need some armament with a pair of 30mil as a minimum.
I’m with you on this Andy, particularly as the Gurkha’s are part of our assault teams already. I think the future for the army is mainly in the likes of expanded 16 th Air assault type forces that can be available at very short notice almost anywhere. We” need air transport and intelligence beefed up as well but the chances of that are sadly very slim.
I think the Andrew already has plans for the sailors freed up by losing the MCMV’s.
The trouble with RFA is lack of identity. An example of this is during annual pay reviews, they are civil servants one minute, then Navy the next. They are offered the lowest pay of the two organisations dependant on what is being offered at the time. They have some really skilled and experienced people that are being offered better pay and terms and conditions elsewhere. Equivalent ranks compared with the RN are earning alot less than their counterparts which never used to be the case. Pay has never recovered since the 2009 credit crunch. Looks like they will be following… Read more »
You’ll probably find these new ships will UMS as most RFA ships are. Even the Bay boats are UMS when soley RFA crewed (No passengers) the RFA is a far cheaper option for the MoD. For the RN to run them you’d have to put a zero at the end of the 15 crew that the RFA will run them with
RFA is merchant navy, and their pay package and rotations are worse then other merchant navy companies.
Got you.
Most of Wave Ruler is on Wave Knight.
Hi Steve,
Not sure if there is anything specific other than it requires people to be away from home, potentially for long periods of time. It is a life style that few seem to want these days.
One thing I am aware of is that the RFA gets a lot of its recruits from the RN, which itself is short staffed…
Cheers CR
RFA crew is from RN. Officers are merchant navy trained, sponsored by RFA or brought in from other companies. The shortage is in senior officers. Captains, Chief Engineers.
Presumably the same reason as every other employer, too many vacancies and not enough people to fill them all. It’s a jobseekers market at the moment, though that may flip with the recession.
@coll, chariotrider, Sean
Thanks for the replies. I was genuinely curious about whether pay or conditions on board compared badly to other merchant marine employers
Poor pay.
I’d go back in a heartbeat, but maybe a tad too old now.
Ditto
The RFA recruitment is not that bad, they do not have as many extras, but they certaintly aren’t advertising big style their jobs. It’s only the senior ranks also. Any merchant navy officer can quickly be recruited and convert to RFA.
The Royal Navy has a much greater shortage of experienced engineers on the other hand where some of their OPVs were going to have merchant navy engineers contracted.
Being ex RFA and RN (retired after 32 years) I always found the better more skilled engineers came from the merchant navy.
Small RFA crews, ROVs and other systems to be manned by contractors.
Shouldn’t this be coastguard work rather than royal navy if we had fully funded coastguard that is.
Hopefully some sensors for the undersea assets will be bought as well. I don’t know enough about them to say if it’s easy to do. Like sound detectors, motion detectors etc. Anything goes near the cable it gets detected and investigated. I can’t see any other way of knowing they under sea assets are safe.
Hi MS, You have identified the crux of the problem… Underwater cables that cross oceans are by their very nature very vulnerable. At the moment the main mode of attack appears to be on the continental shelf using a submarine to deploy UUV’s to insert or attach eves dropping ‘boxes’. As I understand it data is recorded on the box and collected later. That means you could try tracking the submarine doing the deployment of the data recorder and simply ‘pick up’ the offending box. Sounds easy don’t it… but I bet it ain’t! Scientists have sent tethered ROV’s much… Read more »
“I shall make further announcements on our continued Naval investment in the coming weeks.”
That was an intriguing comment to finish on. Batch 2 of the T26 perchance..?
Cheers CR
A potential timing for that might be when Glasgow is floated off and into Scotstoun for fitting out. Nothing like a big announcement with a big grey ship in the picture. And Wallace is a Scot.
He not a scot he is from Kent.
Sorry! With a name like Wallace and having been a Scots Guard I made the wrong assumption!
Easily done as he was an MSP as well. I had to check on wiki 😀
Im praying for type 26 order + a batch 3 confirmed. Further astutes or SSNrs and interim anti ship missile for RN and air launched version for RAF Typhoon, poseidon and F35Bs.
Well it is almost Christmas 😜
You’re an optimist. Are you sure you’re on the right site ? 😀
Keep praying Mr Bell, we might get what we wish for!
The speed of delivery of batch 2 is crucial. It’s no use if an order for five expects final delivery in 2040. Confirmation for batch 3 would only follow the cancellation of the Type 83.
There will be no more Astutes. Any further nuclear attack subs will be SSNR. That’s not a bad thing.
Anti-ship is a real possibility. I’m also keeping fingers crossed on that one. It won’t be air launched. Even if we get NSM, I can’t see us paying for JSM when we have Storm Shadow and are already paying for a successor FC/ASM.
JSM is being integrated on F35, with at least 5 countries looking at JSM to arm their F35s. Storm Shadow sadly is not being integrated due to costs. So for a stand-off weapon we will initially have Spear. So it would be logical to purchase JSM as would fill some of the Storm Shadow capability gap. As well as giving the F35s a heavier anti-shipping capability.
As said. It is almost Christmas. 16 T26 fitted for and with, and crewed. We can dream, but, you know it makes sense.
forget it the most you can hope for is up gunning what ordered and hope for T32
That answers my question from yesterday. It would have been nice if the conversion was done in Cammell Laird.
Hmmmm.
Russia flew €140m in cash and captured Western weapons to Iran in return for deadly drones, source claimsA Russian military aircraft secretly transported the cash and three models of munition – a British NLAW anti-tank missile, a US Javelin anti-tank missile and a Stinger anti-aircraft missile – to an airport in Tehran in August, the source told Sky News.
https://news.sky.com/story/russia-gave-140m-and-captured-western-weapons-to-iran-in-return-for-deadly-drones-source-claims-12741742
Probably backed up by Chinese scientists.
https://www.mei.edu/publications/not-business-usual-chinese-militarys-visit-iran
The Chinese are not ponying up are they?
They got lots of fingers in lots of pies. Hopefully they’ll get burnt one day.
Experts in reverse engineering no doubt.
Exactly that.
Our good friends the Israelis, won’t appreciate Putin giving NLAW, Javelin and Stingers to the Iranian regime to reverse engineer (if they haven’t already), meaning they could potentially face their knockoff equivalents in some not-to-distant punch-up in the Middle East.
With Bibi back in power, I’m wondering if this would persuade the Israelis to help the Ukrainians. I know the primary reason they haven’t is due to the need for deconfliction with Russia over Syria (Russia has been turning a blind eye to IDF strikes on Syrian/Iranian targets) but who knows…..
Are you basing this on the Iranian ability to make a cardboard model of a Gen5 jet? Or the modellers drone model version of a Vulcan complete with toy engines and toy level controls? Copying the sensors won’t be easy and requires manufacturing tech they don’t have. The Russians couldn’t do it to that level: look at the junk they made. The Iranians have even less tech. Making the propellants so compact, dense and even burn (vital) will be very, very hard. Then to make the warhead behave in the way it needs to with the accuracy it does is… Read more »
Just a thought… but maybe the idea is not to replicate it, but to understand it. What’s the size of warhead, what is the chemical composition of the explosive/propellant, what is its radar cross section, weight, armour penetration capabilities etc. Maybe the idea is to create a defence against it – or at the very least, update their vehicle top-armour to negate its potency. If they can do that, it might just render the stocks we have obsolete, or need double the hits to create a mission-kill. I’m not saying that’s even possible, but they won’t know for sure unless… Read more »
Cheer up the way things are going in Iran the regime won’t be around by the time they’ve worked out how to maunfacture any copies.
Big slack how this has happened. Hopefully they won’t be exact copies, just with “Chinese cgaeacterusycs
sorry for the gobbledegook…was meant to read…”Chinese characteristics”. Just waiting for a Chinese CAMM and F35B to appear now.
The inclusion of Stinger seems dubious.
‘…and I shall make further announcements on our continued Naval investment in the coming weeks….’
I like the sound of that.
What like more cuts 🙂
Clutching at straws man, I liked the sound of ‘investment’.
It was a joke hence the smiley , oh well, where the tumble weed emoji.
I know it was a joke, I’m the one clutching at straws.
Ah now I get it.
On a scale of HMS Magpie to QE, how large will these be?
Hi eclipse, The most likely type of vessel that has been speculated about is an oil rig support vessel. A quick look at a ship brokerage website suggests about 75m long and about 2 to 3 thousand tonnes. So about about the size of or a bit large than a B2 River class OPV. The support vessels come in a range of shapes and sizes, but the type we seem to be talking about has the super structure forward and a large cargo deck aft. Some come with ROV handling equipment and heavy duty cranes for maintaining sea bed well… Read more »
Damn, someone/some people dialed up the gain on the purchase of this ship class–big time! Presume there is a significant intel component to decision. Probably doesn’t hurt that R. Sunak was an early proponent. OOA Nov. 17th there could be some interesting decisions/revelations. Demonstration that HMG can upshift pace of activity, based upon current events. Impressive! 🤔😳😊
Hi FormerUSAF,
Steady there mate, lets not get too excited, buying a couple of second hand off shore oil rig support ship ain’t exactly pushing the boat out, pardon the pun.
Our politicians have disappointed me way too often…
Cheers CR
You describe this Con administration as impressive? Are you mainlining bleach?
The omnishambles of the last 12 years will denuded Britain of respect and raw military power for years to come.
Did you not almost describe a Batch 3 River… and here we go again, reinventing the wheel.
Hi David
That did cross my mind as well 🙂
However, I suspect a couple of second hand oil rig supply / support ships would be a damn site cheaper and quicker. I also wonder if the supply ship design might offer better heavy weather motion characterisitics given they are designed to supply rigs in the North Sea…
Also, I wonder whether the MROSS might have additonal UUV / ROV support features such as a moon pool or equipment to make repairs to seabed infrastructure. Just some random thoughts.
Cheers CR
You’ve been watching James Bond again, haven’t you? … moon pools 🙂
You’re quite right, however, these vessels need manning and in all respects, SBS should be part of the crew… we are entering… uncharted waters… after all 😉
One of the vessels is just under five thousand tonne, the other is three thousand, Both are ‘off the shelf’ OSVs
Do you by any chance have links? I’d want to take a look.
Good to see these will be off the shelf and rapidly purchased. I’m also glad they will be RFA crewed. It’s the type of secondary mission much better performed by RFA crews than wasting scarce naval crews on. Indeed almost everything these vessels are doing can be better provided by civilian teams.
That’s not to say RFA crews are abundant. They have just as many shortages as the RN.
All well and good protecting communications cables, but another white elephant in the room is the UK policy of putting wind farms off shore. Are these expected to be protected by the navy as well? Putting power generation outside the borders of the country leaves it vulnerable.
How else are you going to power the country without offshore wind?.
How is it any different to offshore oil?
Why do you define it as a white elephant? It’s the cheapest most reliable power we have and an industrial field where the UK leads the world.
The generation is on land, you would hope better protected. If you hade a oil storage depot you can continue generating until your reserve has run out. Offshore wind will stop generating as soon as it is taken out. Putting generation outside the borders of the UK, increases the risk it could be compromised … Russia is taking out land based power stations … how much easier is it to take out unprotected sea based generation. What do you think would stop generating first in the event of war, offshore or land based generation? No power, what is the point… Read more »
The UK is pretty small and dense, it does not have the capability to power itself in any substantial way with onshore generation. Offshore generation is far more secure than relying on foreign oil and gas. Also we are not talking about a single point of failure rather hundreds or thousands of cables not easy to find. Onshore cables are easy to find and very open to sabotage. If the Russians want to attack the cables it will be discovered and it will be a deceleration of war. Power Cables are also fairly easy to fix. They are all in… Read more »
Outstanding post. The cable connection between Scotland and the northern isles – including the Faeroes – were cut last month. It took a week to repair. I gather the prevailing view was that it was caused by a fishing trawler
Do you not agree that off shore wind is going to require a lot of naval protection in the event of a potential conflict? Is there sufficient resources to protect these exposed resources?
An alternative view of saying this infrastructure is easy to repair, it is also easier to attack. I hope you are correct about UK having the correct mix of generation/storage resources, but do we?.
I do agree though we should be investigating and investing more in SMRs
Scotland already produces two times the amount of electricity it needs using a combination of off shore and on shore wind farms. Because of the dispursed nature of these shutting down power entirely would not be easy. Of course Scotland, in particular the north is far less populated than the rest of the UK. Currently Scotland exports electricity to the rest of the UK but a combination of distance and poor infrastructure south of the Scottish border means that a high % of electricity is lost. Some of the off shore farms are absolutely vast, as you point out it… Read more »
Dont get me started on the UK power production. Yes to diversification but we shoukd be able to produce at all times 100% of our electricity requirements. The fact the private energy companies have singularily failed to invest in energy production and critical national infrastructure for the last 30 years shows the private sector is not some nirvana. We need Rolls Royce SMR now. Order 40 units capable of powering 10-12 million homes now and that will be a big help. They can be clustered onto just 8 sites each with 5 or 6 SMRs and still have a smaller… Read more »
I’m hopeful but sceptical for SMR, with current tech we need a non renewable option but that might not be the case in 5 years. French EPR is a disaster., Way too expensive. RR SMR is promising however with the last generation of reactors the argument was to make them big to make them cheaper. Now the argument is make them small to make them cheaper. We really need to stop fannying around though. I would love to see a crash program to get SMR up and running however I have little faith in either HMG or RR to do… Read more »
Absolutely. I’d be hopeful for SMR power to hit the grid before the end of this decade. Which makes me wonder why the government are still talking about more large reactors following Hinkley. A £35bn Franco-Chinese Sizewell C wouldn’t come on stream until the end of the 2030s, by which time many British SMRs could have been built. About 7 SMRs would equal Sizewell.
Its not like oil, as at its peak didn’t power every thing, we had Nuclear, Coal and Gas. Oil is also transportable so worse case you import. Offshore wind will be deployed over vast areas and by next decade also power transportation either electrically or green hydrogen. The cables aren’t the only thing that’s vulnerable, see below the damage a commercial drone can do to wing, swarms of drones into a wind farm would do untold damage especially if they’ve been designed to specifically to do that, they won’t even need to be armed. We’ll be chasing our tails on… Read more »
WAVE/TIDAL Power is better, less of an impact and gives constant generation compared to wind which can only work in a small range of wind speed. Wind has never been or will ever replace power stations as they are not constant. Poor investment really when wave and tidal is there 100% of the time around our coast. Would also have helped to keep our ship building industry going too.
Wind farms aren’t that far off shore. And each one is so low power it actually means they are much better then one huge coal or gas power station that can be taken out with a single cruise missiles, see Ukriane.
I agree its going to be difficult to physically secure. You could take out a number of turbines by flying a transport plane over them at 90 deg to the wind and off loading scrap metal out the back, the blade integrity only needs to be compromised and with the tips doing 200mph a lump of metal hitting it on the upsweep at 120 mph will do that, the wind will do the rest. There is of course more sophisticated ways to take them out.
Where are they being built?
I think the first two are likely to be converted second hand off shore oil rig support vessels – certainly that is the option most talked about and the timescale would support that concept.
Cheers CR
Glad to see Wallace is shifting up a gear. Let’s face facts; we are in a de facto state of (hybrid) war with Russia.
An acrual good news story. It’s great news. I wonder what other shipbuilding announcement Ben Wallace was alluding too. Further type 26 frigates. More astutes. 🙏🙏🙏
Hi Mr Bell, More Astutes is most unlikely as Rolls Royce have switched to production of the next gen reactors for the Dreadnaught SSBN’s and apparently the SSN(R) will used the same. My understanding is that they do not have the capacity to build two types of reactor as the same time. Even if they did the Astute reactor reportedly does not meet modern safety requirements. My first thought was confirmation of the B2 T26 frigates rather than any extra above the planned 8. Having said that there is still plenty of time to order a Batch 3 of say… Read more »
PWR2 is unsafe and ceased production.
FSSS and maybe type 32, can’t see anything else naval getting announced. Interim anti ship missile capability perhaps.
My pennyworth would be either a ninth 26 or confirmation of 5 32’s. Either would be very nice and achievable. 😊
I love the optimism but I’m going to say the announcement will be we have bought this ship from x and it will be converted at y shipyard.
If they are grey will they be armed let’s say 30mm? But knowing the MOD dislike of guns on anything I’ll guess NOT ..lol
Is ironic that Trump told the Europeans years ago to start doing more for their own defense and they all ignored him and wanted to continue to leech off America and the Brits. They never thought Russia, whom they financially support with the massive purchase of their oil and gas would ever start a major European war. Now that they have they are all scrambling to buy military equipment to protect themselves. Funny that all the EU leaders supported Biden and his was the idiot that told the Russians during a press conference in Jan ’22 that he would be… Read more »
With one qualification agree with you. Biden has been a shitstorm everywhere in everything except post 24 Feb in Ukraine.
I don’t think they bring it up because it’s not true.
Poland can defeat Russia on its own, the rest of European NATO would tear it apart even without the USA and the UK. European NATO has close to 2 million personnel, more than the USA and UK combined. Sure it’s territorial defence orientated but that’s what you need to defend from Russia.
https://youtu.be/LKlIh_-U4bU
Joe Biden was crystal clear with Putin and he decided to go anyway. If Biden had lost to Trump he would probably have gift wrapped Ukraine in a bow for Putin.
I would question whether Poland can “defeat” Russia on its own. Resist an invasion? Yes. However, they will be unable to incur damage on the Russian homeland and industry, while sustaining enormous civilian and infrastructural losses due to cruise missile attacks, artillery barrages, etc. Yes both of those methods (if using Russian weapons) are inaccurate and ineffective, but fiscal devastation will be significantly higher on the Polish side.
Stranger still that the MAGA idiots never bring up the close ties between Trump and Russia, Trump’s fawning sycophancy towards Putin and how much the Kremlin would like to see Trump back in the White House.
Couldn’t understand why Boris was funding a luxury yacht of 200 million when DfT was not giving funding to replace a 40 year old light house tender THV Patricia which would be a £60-80 million project, and could even encorporate a royal cabin for a few million…
The light house tenders have multibeam and sonar for underwater surveys, had auxiliary roles as mine sweepers in ww2 and cold war, they also assisted with D-day beach landings buoying out safe channels.
Great news, would also be good if these two ships could replace some of the capability lost with the withdrawal of RFA Diligence or provide Autonomous MCM support in addition to their primary function. this would make me double happy.
Any attacks on undersea assets will in all likelihood priorities IUSS cables and assets first. With those gone the ability to track and localise subs goes and finding subs becomes a whole different and more difficult game.If they cannot be found and tracked then you can have free reign to do what you want to Fibre and power cables. SOSUS never went away …it just changed its name and the way its controlled and operated. Its telling that one of if not the largest contingent of UK Armed Forces detachments in the USA is at Dam Neck which is IUSS… Read more »
Wonder whether proven sabotage/destruction of IUSS components would be considered an act of war or Article 5 triggering event for NATO?
It’s difficult to see how the RFA can continue to man their current ships let alone these new MROS. Morale is rock bottom and experienced people are leaving due to better pay and conditions elsewhere. They are then being run by a Commodore that is completely out of touch and is unaware of the current cost of living crisis. The TU is currently balloting members to go on strike as they have been offered a measly 2.95 pay increase, so you can see why recruitment and retention is such an issue.
A wise prudent decision. The question as always is, is two enough? Still, a good move and they will be deployed early it seems.
As they will be required to conduct other functions too – eg survey work, oceanographic data gathering etc you would have to conclude that two aren’t enough.
We have hundreds of miles of cables and pipes that we are responsible for, checking/keeping a eye on these will take up a vast amount of time. Something will have to give to complete this one task.
When they find…something….cutting cables or whatever, what will they do about it?? Depth charges? UUAV? Divers? Harsh language?
AA
A sternly worded memo, hopefully stenciled on the side of a Spearfish torpedo? 😉
I would like to think so! But, it’s an issue. Blowing something up next to a cable might not be a good idea. The idea of patrolling appears to be sound, but the distances and numbers of cables coupled with the harsh sensing environment makes you wonder if anything meaningful can be accomplished. Just like my post regarding the Kingfisher 5 inch gun depth charge (elsewhere….), someone thinks it’s a good idea and we are spending millions on it. Is it a knee jerk reaction? Will these ships be armed to carry out their task, and if so, what with?… Read more »
AA,
My text was a slightly facetious response. Believe RN/NATO have well established doctrine and procedures for graduated response to underwater threats. Would be enjoyable to speculate that an Astute class might be in immediate vicinity, given specific, actionable intel.
I gathered your reply was tongue-in-cheek, but I have yet to see a reply Even suggesting how this threat would be dealt with. It may be of course that the answer is on a need-to-know basis and we will never know how they intend to deal with the issue. If that’s the case then probably those who DO have an inkling about this are keeping schtum (quiet)! Not that these ships will be so armed, but it’s almost the sort of thing that the gun launched Kingfisher round might be of some use, providing some bang to disrupt cutting operations… Read more »
Presume these vessels will be equipped w/ basic self-protection measures.
A bit of common sense! But only brought about by if any of our cables or comms/pipelines are cut/destroyed it cannot be hidden from the public and there would be an outrage no Government could bluff their way out of!
This is good news and a step in the right direction, but it is only half of a solution what happens if/when something is detected these vessels have no ability to counter any thing on the bottom, so would need an escort that can mount a clearance operation. So instead of scrapping the mine hunter force why not pear them up with these new vessels to help combat anything that is detected.