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.
I think you’ll find she has already been sold to Brazil.
Bulwark has been sold and is gone, Albion it’s seems has not.. selling bulwark Was probably one of the stupidest defence moves this present government has made…having a 70 million refit and selling for 20 million was the hight of treasury lead insanity. The problem is Albion is a mess and needs an expensive refit..
If the government was in anyway making sensible decisions it would have binned Albion and Argus.. and used the money to keep bulwark running.. maybe purchased a modular role 3 facility that could be used for any of the 3 bays or bulwark.
As is I think any government worth its salt will admit if fucked up and has cost the taxpayer a ton of money in selling Bulwark.. put that 20million towards refitting Albion, give it some aviation capability and role 3. then bin Angus for annual savings and us its crew to keep all the tides running, Within a couple of years the RNs frigate numbers are going to drop so by the time Albion is out of refit there should be spare crew.. run Albion until mid 2030s.
Okay i got the Bulwark and Albion mixed up. If Argus is more buggered than Bulwark is not worth going further with the later even as an interim? Might be more quid down the drain but there’s more thsn half a ship there.
We couldnt “run” either Albion as there is bugger all crew left to staff them.
We are losing frigates faster than we are gaining them so yes there will be crews in a couple of years.
You realise some of those retirements are based on freeing up crew for new frigates? They have to be trained on the new systems. Also even if that were the case, what happens when the bulk of new frigates do show up, do you keep the 30 year old LPD with no replacement around or the shiny new frigate.
No the frigates are being retired out as they hit their 6 year post lifex refit.. because they are all beyond economic repair and the Albion is not 30 years old it’s 22 years old and spent 8 of those 22 years not at sea.. she was built to spend 30 years at sea and it’s very likely she would till the late 2030s.
Argyll was retired due to lack of crew, it was literally declared and stated in articles.
You do realise that like every other T23 that entered the 6 year post lifex refit Argyll was suddenly retired before the majority of the refit work was even started.. your could not crew Argyll’s even if you wanted it was nackered.. and at the same time they retired Argyll they still kept Albion and bulwark.. it was a year later they retired Albion and bulwark.. they thing is many ships don’t have crews.. that is standard in every navy.. you simply have a skeleton crew and maintain them.. that is standard practice everywhere.. infact you have about 2 crews for every 3 ships… so retirement of a ship because you don’t have a crew is completely bollox. You don’t just scarp billions of pounds of irreplaceable capital assets because you have crew fluctuations.. only a fucking idiot does that. Infact the Australian naval institution recently punished an article that essentially stated HMG were literally fucking incompetent idiots for scrapping bulwark and Albion and that there was no rational decision making process that could ever account for it.. and that is was a strategically insane thing to do that massively damaged Europe for the sake of a couple of 10s million pounds a year ( pocket change)…. As I and others do keep telling you.. it’s actually possible to recruit and train new crews if needed within a few years.. replacing the albions would take a decade and billions.
You grossly underestimate our problems with recruitment and retention. Have you seen the state of the RFA? Well the RN is facing a similar problem and for the past 15 years we only had enough personnel for 1 Albion class, and that crew was seconded to other roles when Albion returned home
I’m not saying recruitment and retention is not an issue, it is in most areas ( I was a workforce lead for urgent and emergency care..so I know the issues of getting rare skilled professionals) but and this is really important… you can always find and train people if you need them, you can entice people back, you can open your training pipelines… it is simply investment in a workforce strategy..
But massively complex capital projects are harder than pure workforce planning because:
1) you need to create the skilled workforce to create the capital project ( the shipbuilding capacity.
2) you need to create the actual capital project build ( build the ship)
3) you need to then once you have the capital project built or at least being built start to bring together and create the crew…
Where is if you have the ship already built and in place all you need to do is step 3…. So if the shit hits the fan it’s actually possible to reactivate a ship you have and re crew it…. But if you don’t have it there is little chance you will be able to build it before the war is over..even a long drawn out peer war.
The reality of the crew for the the Albion and bulwark was the RN used them so they could run both carriers concurrently.. running both at the same time is 1500 sailors on board ship.. they did not need to run both carriers concurrently infact they never planned to run both carrier’s concurrently.. when you dig down it’s become the RN was playing defensive politics.. because of the stupidity of HMG if you don’t have a ship fully crewed and active it’s at risk of cut.. so the RN fully crewed and ran both carriers.. because it knew the ships it did not fully crew and run would get cut..
What it should have done was ( if HMG was not run by fuckwits who only see the in year budget line).
Fully crewed and had at 1 months notice or fully deployed 1 carrier and 1 amphibious vessel.. 1100 crew.
At 3-6 months notice or in refit 1 carrier and 1 amphibious vessel ( this is important.. they are still maintained in a state of reasonable readiness)… the remaining 400 off crew would have been adequate to to maintain this.
The loss of the Albions is not about crew.. it’s about in year savings.. really small in year savings.. I know what HMG is like I spent 30 years many of those at a senior level in the NHS fighting the insanity of the slash and burn in year budget.. I know it’s insane and come covid when we needed all that capacity we had slashed and burnt we did not have it.. and the destruction of our economy by lockdown occurred.. if the NHS had not had it’s capacity in bed base and public health burned on the alter of many decades of in year savings.. I assure you we could have avoided the lockdowns.
Frigate crews are going to the new frigates, we can barely staff the escort fleet as is.
Good idea
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.
Bulwark was sold on the 10sept this year.. Albion is sitting around doing sod all but needs a full refit.
My understanding is that the RAN are very fond of HMAS Choules, but struggle with crewing – does that sound about right?
It’s difficult try to row whilst upside down.
She looks a slightly different shade of grey in the RAN serviice but yes she’s getting used so she works but it seems to spend a lot of time against the wharf as do the two Canberra LHDs.
And you think wed have any better chances of crewing it….
The Waves are going for scrap, they are tankers, not anything else
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.
Maybe on the Bay flight deck. There were some proposals put forward a while back about upgrading the Bays hangar facilities. Why don’t they do that across 1-3 of the Bays if the MRSS is up to 5 years away? Or buy back HMAS Choules and upgrade her?
No you definitely couldn’t do that.
No way can a credible quality of hospital be created in containers.
This is potentially full on ER surgery to enable severe casualties to recover enough to be medivacced back home.
The container hospital idea belongs with the Max Hastings [DeathTrap] class of carriers.
A far better idea would be to upgrade the medical facilities on the QECs – where there is plenty of space. But a proper hospital ship is still needed that can be close in.
No.. you could not let’s look what Argus has and what a small role three looks like, this is what Argus has… I have tried to estimate what that would look like if you modularises it into 20 meter shipping container)
3 operating tables in 3 bay operating theatre ( you can get a single operating table in 1 container =3)
4 resus bay ED.. ( 2 bays per shipping container =2)
1 dental department with an extra operating table. ( 1 shipping container)
1 CT scanner ( CT 1 shipping container)
1 X-ray room ( X-ray 1 shipping container)
1 lab for bloods ( labs and blood storage 1-2 shipping containers)
Blood storage capacity and full cold chain
Pharmacy 1 shipping container
Mortuary ( depending on need and how you rack but 60 bodies 1 container)
10 intensive care beds ( 2 beds per container = 5 containers)
20 high dependency beds ( 2 beds per container 10 containers)
70 general ward beds ( you could push to 4 beds but it would be shit..( 20 containers )
Physical therapy facilities (1 container)
So a facility as you have on argues would be a 50 shipping container affair… if you were looking at a frigates mission bay you could get 1 resus bay, 1 theatre and diagnostics with a supporting ITU bed… essentially something for managing 1 major trauma at a time.
Also shipping container hospital would be utterly shit.. life is time and time is easy movement of journey between the receiving area ( helipad), ED resus bay, diagnostic imaging, definitive care ( operating table) and ITU… yes you can get great modular role 3 type hospitals but they are generally not often shipping containers.. if you had a modular hospital you would build it using essentially the whole vehicle deck of an Albion or bay.
The ‘modular hospital’ idea sounds like it might fly. Do you have any relevant examples of where they have been used?
Good analysis and list here. Wonder then if eirther of the Waves could be converted and used? They should be able to take 50 FEUs.
A quick check online demonstrates there are dozens of relatively new ships in the 20,000-25,000 ton hull range that could replace Argus as primary casualty receiving ship/ auxillary helicopter and drone carrier roles for as little as £100 million including hull conversion costs.
A direct civilian hull replacement would be the cheapest option and could serve, like Argus did, for 20+ years.
I’m not sure you could convert a civilian ship that easily with theatre space etc.
Trying to shoehorn the aviation role into it as well would really cost a lot. I don’t think you would attempt that these days.
Argus was not great at aviation: that is why Ocean was commissioned as well as her unbuilt sister.
To be honest I don’t think you would have much of an issue creating a hospital ship.. you just need a big space and the power.. as well as a basic helipad… what you could not create is what the RN want which is a more general armed aviation auxiliary with role 3… Argus is a lot of different ships..it’s not a hospital ship.
But that isn’t the way MoD would try and do it.
It wouldn’t be simple it would be overly complex.
The trouble with MoD thinking is that once a platform gets a budget line then other ‘things’ are loaded onto that platform…..because….it is funded…..so platforms get very complicated……because…..
👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
Nothing to actually say that has not already been said countless times when it comes to our governments.
We know what will happen.
The central problem is, as always, lack of money..Excluding the sub-100 ton little Archer IPBs, the fleet is currently about 57 vessels, including carriers, subs, escorts, minor warships and RFA auxiliaries.
Just to maintain it at that size would need.2-3 vessels.to be built and commissioned every year.
There is not the budget to do so, leading to ageing vessels in need of.replacement being paid off and gapped. Due to a cut back in orders for new ships since 2010 – for instance, instead of building one new escort a year to keep numbers up, we haven’t built a single one for 12 years since the last T45 was commissioned, so we have a big backlog of older ships needing replaced – the T23s, the River 1s, the MCMVs, the remaining Fort class replenishment ship, HMS Scott and Argus, no doubt others.
Inserting the carriers in the mix siphoned off close on £7bn from the budget. The Astutes, T45s and now T26s coming in at £1bn+ each means a lot of other things have to give. And now we have a host of UAVs and UUVs as new priorities to squeeze into the budget.
Even with the increase in defence spending, it is going to take ten years just to clear most of the ship-building backlog and start to.catch up. So not surprising that a replacement for Argus has been left on the back-burner and no action taken. I doubt the money is there to buy and convert a merchant ship into a PCRS or to convert a Wave or Albion to do the job.
The batting order for the RFA is the second Proteus MROS, then the 3 FSSS replenishment ships, then the first batch of 3 MRSS to replace the Bays. That is a chunky shipbuilding programme into which to add a PCRS. In an ideal world, we would order a fourth MRSS and fir it out as a PCRS/humanitarian relief ship, but I can’t see the budget or RFA construction programme stretching to that.
Yes but there is a second underlying issue.. the flogging of ships and not maintaining them.. essentially due to very small in year savings HMG has pissed away 2 20,000 ton amphibious vessels and a 15,000 ton amphibious vessel all which could have been running will into the mid 2030s and still only been 25-30 years old… that’s a billion in capital expenditure.. essentially disposed of for nothing 10-15 years to early.
HMG keeps doing this.. the tranche 1 typhoons had an average flight hours of about 2100.. ( one had only ever flown 5 hours..) yes by now they had all been pulled apart and were OS..but they could have been/ should have been maintained.. the 200 tornadoes had about 60% of the fleet flying hours left on them… HMG is in some ways profligate with its capital investments throwing away vastly expensive equipment way before its at the end of its life and yet on the other hand it’s making the army drive around in 50 year old armoured fighting vehicles.
Why aren’t thry being held to account for this waste and poor management? Any opposition in parliament should be highlighting this to their faces to (as the saying goes here in Aus) “to keep the bastards honest”! Unless they themselves hsve done the same. Need stronger accountable leadership on this from PM and DM done. Hard to respect this sort of waste goings on or to see this happening and getting away with it in the commercial world.
*down
Because no one in parliament cares about defense, just look at the sessions on defence, a dozen arses in seats at best
I thought the MRSS is to replace thr Albion/Bulwark/Argus first. Then another 3 maybe of a different size to replace the Bays that still need to be ordered.
The central problem is, as always, lack of money. Excluding the sub-100 ton little Archer IPBs, the fleet is currently about 57 vessels, including carriers, subs, escorts, minor warships and RFA auxiliaries.
Just to maintain it at that size would need.2-3 vessels.to be built and commissioned every year.
There is not the budget to do so, leading to ageing vessels in need of.replacement being paid off and gapped. Due to a cut back in orders for new ships since 2010 – for instance, instead of building one new escort a year to keep numbers up, we haven’t built a single one for 12 years since the last T45 was commissioned, so we have a big backlog of older ships needing replaced – the T23s, the River 1s, the MCMVs, the remaining Fort class replenishment ship, HMS Scott and Argus, no doubt others.
Inserting the carriers in the mix siphoned off close on £7bn from the budget. The Astutes, T45s and now T26s coming in at £1bn+ each means a lot of other things have had to give. And now we have a host of UAVs and UUVs as new priorities to squeeze into the budget.
Even with the increase in defence spending, it is going to take ten years just to clear most of the ship-building backlog and start to.catch up. So not surprising that a replacement for Argus has been left on the back-burner and no action taken. I doubt the money is there to buy and convert a merchant ship into a PCRS or to convert a Wave or Albion to do the job.
The batting order for the RFA is the second Proteus MROS, then the 3 FSSS replenishment ships, then the first batch of 3 MRSS to replace the Bays. That is a chunky shipbuilding programme into which to add a PCRS. In an ideal world, we would order a fourth MRSS and fit it out as a PCRS/humanitarian relief ship, but I can’t see the budget or RFA construction programme stretching to that.
More double entries on here than a
Oh hang on, It’s a family site. 🤔😁👀
The “lack of money” is showing the budget itself must be wrong or unrealistic or mismanaged or all of these?
Like the idea of fourth MRSS but even with three, bring the first of the class forward and fit her out.
Rather than build another ( expensive) MRSS we could maybe explore an additional Type 31 – customised for HADR work. I read in NLO that Ireland have dropped their idea for a HADR ship in favour of a MRCV with more of a combat emphasis. At a guess I would venture ( pun intended) that ‘patrol frigate’ spec Type 31 could be fitted out with a ‘modular hospital’ for use in combat or HADR scenarios. Minimal crew for ‘OPV’ assignments but big enough to host larger numbers when required.
no more scrapping without built and ready replacements!
A visit to Portsmouth shows that without Argus and 4x decommissioned frigates the home of the RN is empty bar Victory/ Warrior – and Daring. Argus should be repaired until a replacement is ordered and built.
With you on Argus. If she’s really needed now get the survey done fix her up and stop faffing around. Do any of the MRSS /Elliade Strike proposals include hospital facilities? If they do why not bring the schedule of the lead ship forward? Find a spot and build it or get the Koreans or Spanish to build it!
Argus is done! What do you think spending millions on her will get you, if youre lucky another 3-4 years, if youre not, she’ll be declared for scrap.
Another 5-7 years until the replacement’s in place – is better than having no capability. Too many gaps in capability.
We’ll have spent the money and have no capability, Argus was already extended more than once
So this is HMG Christmas present for the RN . They keep talking about the biggest increase in the defence budget since the cold war and in reality they just keep chopping.away at what little kit we do have .like I said on another post the other day about giving the Chinese government the go ahead to build a super Embassy ,why not just give them the Key’s to number 10 .While at it Starmer should get a pair of keys cut for Russia. It’s ironic Starmer was shouting down the Reform party today in the house of parliament about an MP who took bribes for Russia which is fair enough. But at the same time in a way he’s giving the Chinese & Russians what they want .
Comments here reflect just how fed up people really are, with the incompetence of decision makers in defence/govt.
It truly is a sad, sad state of affairs.
I am no maritime expert but surely a ship should get a Lloyds inspection every year(?) and presumably also an inspection by RN/RFA Engineering staff. Happy to be educated on that. How then could a ship go from being OK one year to being totally unseaworthy the next?
More cuts from the Ministry of Cuts. The task of disarming the armed forces continues.
Lets be realistic, ARGUS should have been condemned to the scrap yard over in 2010 when she reached 30years old but like the rest of the MARS project her replacement never got off the ground. She like Fort Victoria are past it and some proper investment in the entire RFA is required if the Government are serious about a blue water navy. RFA sailor deserve better otherwise their number will dwindle until there is no one left except the pen pusher who don’t go to sea and know nothing about service.