RFA Argus’s future remains in doubt after a written parliamentary answer confirmed no decision yet on whether she will be repaired or retired.
Responding to a question from Lord Leigh of Hurley on what options the Government is considering, defence minister Lord Coaker said the Royal Fleet Auxiliary “continue to work alongside DE and S, surveyors and commercial partners to assess the cost and value of effecting the required repairs.”
Argus has not sailed since July, when Lloyd’s Register and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency withdrew her safety certification. Inspectors deemed her unfit to go to sea in any capacity, leaving the UK’s only dedicated Primary Casualty Receiving Ship effectively immobilised at HMNB Portsmouth.
Her unavailability has created a serious capability gap. Argus has long been central to the UK’s afloat medical provision, serving as the only platform capable of providing full hospital-level care at sea. She also had an emerging aviation and littoral support role, and had been expected to remain in service beyond 2030.
The scale of the certification issues means ministers face a stark choice: commit to an extensive and likely expensive refit, or accept early retirement and absorb the operational consequences. Until a decision is taken, Argus remains unavailable. The timeline for any return to service, if it happens at all, is still unknown.
just scrap her and go with out, thats always works with the MOD, save a few £ and go with out. Only to spend much more later. Same old, same old
It might be worth spending a few quid an interim tp geg it seaworthy unless they can they bring forward one if the 3 MRSS planned ships and build early in the UK or Korea? Is it public knowlege of what’s wrong with these ships? It seems to have all happened suddenly.
Can they use/convert either of the Wave class? Do any of our Allies have any spare similar ships that we could lease?
Would the UK consider buying back HMAS Choules of Aus?
*to get
Would it be cheaper to restore and utilise HMS Bulwark if Albion has been sold?
what ever is cheapest, most frustrating, makes no sense and gaps a role the MOD will do, it will never change save a few pounds then regret it later.
By any normal standards Argus should have been replaced years ago. Another of the many delays and cuts of the last 20 years that are coming home to roost now.
I wonder how the costs of buying a new hull and converting it would compare to repairing this 45 year old one and how much more service life it would provide.
The problem is the same as all the others.. saving in year capital expenditure last decade has essentially mortgaged the future.
But this one could have been managed better and has been a created issue not due to a lack of building but selling off perfectly good ships the rn had 4 bays and 2 Albion’s all would have lasted to the mid 2030s.. now it just has 3 bays.
Just give her to Brazil, along with £100 million.
Assuming for a moment that it doesn’t take 4 months to do a survey I presume we are currently in the incredibly difficult period where highly paid individuals with years of experience are obliged to actually make a decision. At this point the principle issue is not going to be making the right decision for the nations defence or the fairness of taxpayers but ensuring that no decision can have an impact on the person signing the decision off. That person will either be promoted immediately after making the decision or will retire. Meaning no individual can have their career impacted by making a bad call.
Welcome to the world civil service decision making by committee – lots of discussion & no responsibility
I don’t envy the person making this decision. Critical capability that will probably cost mega bucks to get back to sea, with no hope of a replacement within a suitable timeframe.
As Argus is genuinely useful and needed my suspicion is that this is all about optics.
They simply blame the last lot for not ordering MRSS/T32 or whatever it is called.
The optics are OK, if the MRSS order is placed.
So my betting is that foot shuffling is order of the day until the next class of ships is announced.
I recall the decision made not too many years ago that it would be better to upgrade Argus than upgrade the Bays to help create the LSGs and to keep a provision until MRSS is build. However, there seems to be no consequential thinking behind what little decision making actually happens. If you decide to do something you have to think through all the elements required to make it work, and in particular put aside the budgets needed to make it all happen. Here we see that the inevitable requirement for a complete overhaul of a forty year-old ship has somehow caught MOD by surprise. There’s so much robbing Peter to pay Paul going on that no decision can be followed through, and weirdly that the knock-on effects are allowed to go unnoticed or unhandled.
Why didn’t this conversation about Argus already take place alongside the previous decision to upgrade, which presumably came with a budget discussion, or alongside the reallocation of those funds when a different project took precedence? Is there no software telling senior leadership that if they take the money from over here, the following programmes will be affected, so they need to decide what to do about them? Or do they just not bother looking, accepting that future catastrophes will fall on them as a “nice surprise”?
The British penchant for muddling through is doing us no favours.
Surprised the MOD did not see this coming.
Argus was original built in 1981 and the MOD has had the ship since 1987 after conversion
Now they are going to take ages to make a decision – something is wrong with MOD
Hospital/PCR ships are quite rare. The US has 2 large converted oil tankers that are now 50 years old. Several other navies have much smaller ships, many now quite old too.
The supposed replacement for Argus has now become the MRStrike Ship, implying a design more heavily armed than a support ship.
If we really need a hospital ship, would it make sense to design a vessel/ conversion specifically for that role, leaving other roles to the future MRSS?
The two Waves are sitting doing nothing as is Bulwark. Maybe they can be upgraded. The Bay that got away, now HMAS Choules is down here in Sydney harbour if there’s thoughts of buying her back. It doesn’t look too heavily used.
Could you assemble a credible hospital facility from containers on a T31 flight deck?
Maybe a small cargo container ship. Need the flight deck kept free for helo drone ops.