The potential futures of British power projection

That is why a single squadron is only for peace time deployments to provide self protection. 2-3 Squadrons would be on board in a combat situation.

Also the RN do not envision a single carrier operating in the strike and amphibious role at the same time. If it came down to it, HMS QE would be rolling with 3 squadrons for CAP and strike and HMS PW would be rolling with 1 squadrons for amphibious support, while fulfilling the helicopter assault role.

sack the successor submarine project and retain what we havei.e. stop the cuts.

is it near the time when we look properly into the feasibility of a u.k defence force(u.k.df)or u.k armed service(UKAS)?

france is desperate for a de gaulle replacement prince of wales a mistral in return

Lastly we have the third tier of threats, the least serious. The first is “a large-scale conventional military attack on Britain” by an unspecified other state. The second, somewhat desperately, is terrorism again, the third is crime again. The authors clearly ran out of threats, but had to fill their threat quota. We are also threatened by immigrants and smugglers “trying to cross the UK border”. We are “threatened” by an accident at a nuclear site; by a conventional attack on a Nato ally, and by an attack on a British colony. Finally, we face a curious bundle of threats: fuel shortages, price instability, and “a short- to medium-term disruption to international supplies or resources”.

A Eurofighter Typhoon
A Eurofighter Typhoon: was not up for discussion in the 1997 strategic defence review. Photograph: Ray Troll
You may note that almost none of the above is a threat. They are crimes and catastrophes or, in the case of being “drawn in” to a foreign conflict, a matter of political choice. Many things on the list may make me feel a bit uncomfortable, but few are remotely to do with the security of the state. They are incoherent and repetitive and rather desperate, like a madman with a sandwich board crying, “They are coming to get you; the end is nigh!”

Yet this list was the basis for last month’s strategic defence review with its £45bn price tag. A set of threats that are almost entirely non-military is to be met by submarines carrying nuclear missiles, two new aircraft carriers and dozens of jet fighters.

Let’s start with the threat of a nuclear missile landing on Britain. I have seen no analysis of how this might emerge from the existing international order, and certainly no explanation of how nuclear deterrence might apply in any specific case. In the barely conceivable eventuality of Iran or some such hostile state building a bomb, buying a missile capable of reaching Britain and then firing it, the act would be so lunatic as to be beyond any plausible deterrence. You cannot deter a suicidal nation any more than you can a suicidal bomber. Small wonder defence chiefs wanted their nuclear missile reclassified as “political”.

As for using this precious weapon to deter a conventional attack, that is surely no less fanciful. Britain’s possession of nuclear missiles has had no deterrent value in any of the dozen wars it has fought in half a century. Did we threaten Argentina with it? No. Yet time and again military strategists refer to it as a useful “reserve capability”. When a soldier resorts to abstract nouns you know he has lost the argument.

As for the threat of a conventional attack on the British Isles by another state, we can only ask, who? The threat is so negligible as to be insignificant. It is like insuring one’s house for billions of pounds against an asteroid attack. Is the attack to come from Russia, or France, or Germany, or Ireland? Defence pundits to whom I put this crucial question look down their noses, as if it were impertinent or undergraduate. They murmur that one can never know. Yet the political preconditions for a conventional attack on Britain are so distant – the review relegates it to tier three – that Britain would have some notice and time to re-arm, as we did with remarkable speed when last so confronted in 1940.

By jumbling together accidents, diseases, natural disasters and crimes as “threats”, the government undermines its own plausibility. The defence lobby is trying to hijack the jobs of the police, civil rescue and medical professions. In the case of “price instability”, it even wants to hijack the Financial Services Authority. These are not “threats to national security” against which we expect the defence ministry to plan or assemble conventional forces.

The same applies to the threat which the MoD has struggled for decades to make its own, that of international terrorism. The threat review is so keen that it lists it no fewer than three times. It implies a requirement to deploy conventional forces against terrorists, who might be acting as “proxy” for a state. But there is a difference between a state that wants to overpower, conquer and rule us – a ludicrous threat of no serious concern – and one that merely wants to make a nuisance in the hope of achieving some lesser goal, such as getting Britain out of Northern Ireland or making Israel into a pariah.

The latter certainly has applied, but if we were to deploy conventional forces against such a state we might, over the last quarter century, have declared war on Libya, Syria, Iran, the Irish Republic and even the state of Massachusetts. We did not. We treated an act of terror rightly as a methodology, a criminal means, not a political end. As Joseph Conrad said in The Secret Agent, the terrorist was a pest walking the street alone. His is a local and specific form of violence, causing mayhem in the hope of spreading panic and changing a state’s behaviour in response to it. Terrorism has no political content unless awarded one by the victim nation.

A computer image of one of the navy’s new aircraft carriers
A computer-generated image of one of the navy’s two new aircraft carriers, saved despite cuts. Photograph: MoD/PA
With the IRA and the PLO in the 1970s, the authorities played down the political significance of any outrage. Prisoners were treated as criminals and denied political status. The most limited coverage was given to their demands. Now we do the opposite. We play up the politics. I remember the admirable response to 9/11 by New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. He told New Yorkers on the day of the attack to go about their business as usual, use the park, go to a show, buy a pizza, keep working and, above all, keep spending. The trouble was, 9/11 was so awful an incident as to apparently transform a terrorist outrage into an apparent state of war, and thus admit it within the ambit of conventional defence. Nobody took any notice of what Giuliani said. They did what al-Qaida wanted, which was indulge in mass hysteria. Blair said the rules of the international game had changed – an astonishing accolade to Osama bin Laden. This cannot be unconnected with the fact that a politician’s poll rating soars in the aftermath of a terrorist incident. Nothing helped George Bush more than 9/11.

Politicians rush to the cameras, dive into bunkers and warn of threats to civilisation as we know it. Conventional military forces are put on alert. Blair once rushed tanks to Heathrow in a madcap gesture of self-importance. We invaded Afghanistan for harbouring terrorists. We invaded Iraq on the thesis that it might do so. Do we now invade Pakistan and Yemen on the same basis?

Far from being deterred, terrorists and their sponsors clearly derive prestige and political clout when conventional forces are ranged against them. We thereby put them on the pedestal of state threat. By infringing our liberties and curbing our freedoms in their honour we let them win battles. By being publicly scared, as of this week’s parcel bombs, we invite them to scare us some more.

Such an approach to defence is not just wasteful but counter-productive. Politicians from Blair to Cameron declare the aim of war in Iraq and Afghanistan is to make the streets of Britain safer. There is not an iota of evidence for this extraordinary claim. Most analysts, including former security chiefs in the House of Lords, say the precise opposite. These wars have made us less safe, by making Britain a prime target for terrorists and breeding homegrown terrorists in schools, colleges and mosques. Watching Gordon Brown in Helmand mouthing nonsense about boys dying for safer streets was painful. He clearly did not believe it.

So what of the other most common cause of Britain going to war, the threat of being “drawn into” someone else’s squabble? First, this is not a threat but a political choice. These wars are nowadays called wars of choice. They are always beguiling. What you have, you are induced to deploy, often for the vaguest of purposes, such as “making the world a better place”. The navy cites the need to stop pirates in the Indian Ocean and drug-runners in the Caribbean. Blair contributed British forces to six separate conflicts in his time in office, in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and two each in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia. None was in response to a threat to the security of the British state. They were adjuncts to his foreign policy goal of “hugging close” to Washington.

Armies with nothing to do tend to distort the purpose for which they were formed. They become institutionalised. They coalesce into a wide constituency of veterans, territorial and political supporters, above all, equipment suppliers. As with terrorism, so with the government’s other listed threats, we should ponder those who leap forward to publicise them. Whenever the BBC calls in a “security expert” to comment on the awfulness of some new threat, we should be told for whom he works. Remember Deep Throat’s maxim, follow the money?

Being “drawn in” is the phraseology of the security review. But note the intransitive. Drawn in by whom? In whose interests, or on whose behalf, are we spending billions of pounds killing thousands of people in the Muslim world just now? Shouldn’t we also have been “drawn in” to Rwanda, Darfur, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Burma? In each case, man’s inhumanity to man has been more gross than in Iraq and Afghanistan. We did nothing.

British troops at Basra in Iraq, 2006
British troops disembarking from a helicopter at Basra in southern Iraq in 2007. Photograph: Essam al-Sudani/AFP/Getty Images
From the earliest enunciation of liberal interventionism, it has been wanting in rigour. In 1999, Blair spoke in Chicago in favour of humanitarian “just” wars, as if they carried with them their own validation. All they carried was a clutter of moral superiority. I do not regard Germans or Japanese or Indians or Brazilians as lacking in moral fibre for not fighting alongside us in Blair’s wars. I find nothing peculiarly moral, first in helping the break up of former Yugoslavia, then the break up of Serbia and now the devastation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are left with what I call the ontological argument for defences spending. It exists and therefore it is. It is the ultimate security, to which no concept of proportion can apply. We protect ourselves out of instinct. Like spending on health, you just cannot get enough of it.

It is a response not to known threats (such as Russia), nor even to known unknowns (such as a resurgent Russia), but to those famous unknown unknowns. The great ontologist, Donald Rumsfeld, remains the patron saint of defence expenditure.

The argument can take amazing forms. Come now, say the high priests. Just suppose another Hitler rose again, built a new Luftwaffe and U-boats, and bombed London and sank all our coastal trade. We would need a carrier. Suppose Russia falls under the sway of an oligarch with a grudge against Harrods and a business rival in Kensington Palace Gardens. Suppose he decides to nuke them. Supposed 100 suicide bombers block-booked themselves on Eurostar and went to every Premier League match. You would look pretty silly, Jenkins, wouldn’t you?

I would look pretty silly, and probably I wouldn’t be the only one. But for the time being, I regard such unrealities used to justify massive spending as no less silly. We can only meet realistic threats. We do not build 1,000 NHS hospitals and leave them to await the return of bubonic plague.

Britain as a sovereign state is less “under threat” today than ever in my life, indeed less than ever in its existence. That is to the credit of recent generations of British governments. But this means we do not need a defence that has been successfully rendered obsolete.

The chief threat to me today, if at all, is from crime. Yet we are appalling at combating it. Obsessed with punishment, we neglect crime prevention. To guard me from unreal foreign attack the government spends £45bn, but to guard my home and hearth from crime it spends just £6.4bn, and badly. I am defended against crime, including terrorist attack, not by an army, navy or air force, but by vigilant acquaintances of the criminals, by an alert school and mosque, by the police and by the apparatus of intelligence, espionage and diplomacy.

The truth of the matter is that our defence spending is misdirected and extravagantly out of date. We are re-equipping for Agincourt on the brink of Waterloo. We are laying down long boats for the battle of the Atlantic. We are deploying cold-war weapons against occasional outrages by fanatics with no capacity to cause the state harm.

I sometimes wonder why I see things this way, when so few others do. I am a pragmatist, not a pacifist. But I respect language, and am suspicious of the vapid cliches about national interest, punching our weight, sitting at top tables and being respected. I hate to see terrorism, a miserable perversion, accorded the accolade of grand enemy of the state. I hate to see statesmen whose job is to keep threats out of sight and mind exploiting the politics of fear.

The fault lies partly in the sloppy language used to discuss defence, which loses all ability to convey risk and proportion and slides into sloppy nouns and sloppy thinking. At that point, leaders lose touch with democracy, a serious threat to the security of any state. The only defence against that danger lies not in armies, bombs and guns, but solely in the deployment of meticulous reason.

Why?

If the RN retains the amphibious force that is what we will have.

we can always paint the torpoint, gosport ferrys grey.

agreed, take note M.O.D pass to your local m.p and ask him to forward it to the cabinet. i’ve done this before and actually got replies. your local m.p isn’t just for show he’s there to represent. so put him to work.

So the Navy stays totally dependant on land based air cover, correct?

You should read the article. Carriers are by far the most power surface vessels in the world and a task force built around them is capable of reaching out far away from home and dominating a large stretch of the ocean. They offer nearly unrivaled military hardpower and softpower.

You comment shows you have a complete lack of understanding of how warfare works. Carriers are not redundant, they are very relevant and still the most powerful vessels on the ocean. Warfare is never without risk, saying we dont want carriers because they are vulnerable is incredibly stupid, not to add they are one of the hardest naval assets to sink considering their surface and subsurface escorts and attached air wings.

Oh dear, your comment does show your total lack of knowledge in military matters at both the tactical and strategic level, and your rather limited understanding of UK defence requirements. Never mind, everyone has an opinion no matter now I’ll informed that may be.

agreed, take note M.O.D pass to your local m.p and ask him to forward it to the cabinet. i’ve done this before and actually got replies. your local m.p isn’t just for show he’s there to represent. so put him to work.

Very wrong in my opinion. A navy is not for show with lots of pretty escorts sailing about.
A navy projects power, both hard and soft if need be, i.e humanitarian, thus carriers and amphibs can be used for that.

RAF helicopter assets and in future UAV could also be used from the carriers.

If you want to close a sea you need carriers and carrier air and you need SSN. We will have both.

If you want to power project from the littoral onto land you need carriers, aviation and amphibious forces.

Both these roles need concentrated support from a well resourced RFA.

Numbers need addressing and can be if we can get a balance between quality ( T26 T45 ) and quantity ( T31 and RB2 ) and stop wasting billion pound vessels chasing pirates and use them in concentrated groups supporting the carrier group and the amphibious group.

apologise to brazil and tell them we’re keeping ocean, with the intention of operating her until she actually falls apart.

i was interested to see while googling jump jets, that a vtol version of a raptor has been tested. with all the politics around the f 35. its the dismally low production rate that needs to be addressed locheed has already confirmed it failed to hit its own production figures for the last 12 months.

Which is why T31 is needed in numbers to keep the T26 and T45 for roles such as this.

A peacetime carrier deployment would most likely only include a Type 23, a Type 45, an Astute and a Tide. We would have less available assets, but it would not cripple us.

the french are desperate for a replacement for the de gaulle carrier, offer them P.O.W and fund the retentions. not hide the cuts

13.1 billion foreign aid? enough said, looking at where it goes, it could be halved, but nobody in our fickle chicken coop of a government would be brave enough to do it

i thought we already did.

That is how it works, modern ships take at least 5 years to build and that is only if their program is setup and running. A modern war would be over in a short period, so fighting with what we have would be how it is.

Option 4 is surely the way to go if you can make it work. Karel Doorman style 30,000 ton replenishment ships with well dock and RAS kit. I’mmsure that’s why the defence review postponed to next year and the FSS project is taking its time. Not sure about the C3 role of the LPDs and how best to provide force protection for a vessel which spends most of its life wearing an RFA replenishment hat.

“whilst payment of exorbitant sums to the wealthy elite for the pleasure of doing so.”

Literally what? God I wish I lived in the world that lefties think they live in

At the speeds talked about (mach 5), I would have thought a small cloud of half inch (maybe bigger) ball bearings in its flight path should do the trick.

There are many other countries working on hypersonic weapons include the US. The same things apply to lasers, railguns and nukes, we will have them long before we can defend against them.

I’d take the news about Russian and Chinese hypotonic Weapons with a pinch of salt. Funny enough whilst the media loves to big up Russian, Chinese and Iranian military equipment. They tend to knock back or remain silent on our own equipment. I mean it was not that long ago,where all the media Defence experts were knocking the British for not getting rid of the Challenger 2 and replacing them with the older, ( funny how they left that snippet out) Leopard 2, which as we have seen hasn’t done that well inside Syria. ( Granted Turkish tactics have been pants) in fact the Turks have had to purchase a Ukrainian APS in which to defend their tanks.
Back to the missiles, the West have unstoppable missiles as well, it’s just they use stealth instead of speed, the Yanks with the JASSM, the Brits with the Storm Shadow, Germans and Swedes with Taurus.

Hypersonic missiles can be stopped, the main priority is early detection! Even a slow SeaCeptor can intercept a hypersonic missile its all a question of trigonometry and expected point of interception. This is the reason why a lot of missiles these days jink about as it approaches the target. Both the SeaCeptor and the SeaViper should be able to engage hypersonic missiles that appear over the radar horizon. The problem they will have is in the giving chase interception. The last layers of defence either CIWS or countermeasures should cope with leakers.

Hypersonics are causing a big headache from what I’ve read. Because they travel so god damn fast it’s on you by the time defences have spotted and reacted. CIWS are all but useless as their effect range is only a couple of Km’s leaving 2 seconds before the missile hits. It then has to fire and hit in the terminal phase where the missile will be snaking unpredictably. The best we can hope for is a last minute kill spraying the ship in hypersonic fragments. Still going to hurt.
Long range radar and medium long range intercept missiles only real option to kill one. You would have to launch multiples to hope to hit it though, one calculation said 6. Therefore if you had a saturation attack of, say 12, that’s 72 missiles needed and no guarantee of all being shot down. I’ve tried to find the link explaining it but can’t find it.

Nice list, but never going to happen. That would require an insane uplift in defence spending, which our leaders will never do.

Pacman, we might build 25 T31, we will not have 25 in service. To me T31 is a proof of concept for industry to deliver to a budget. It is my hope that a second batch could be ordered around the mid 2020’s which would improve the capabilities of the T31, for a modest price increase. maybe £400m per hull in todays money.
Are you sure an AAW version of the T26 is the way to go? I would have thought a new design would have been appropriate by then, which is 16 years from now. Unless you propose to have the second batch include Sampson and improved AAW fit.

I like the sound of that. But I think in my mind there could be some changes. If you’re spending that money you might as well make a dedicated LPH, I also don’t feel the type 31 is the way to go. Instead it should be classified as a corvette with the type 26 being a cruiser. And instead build a fleet of 10 frigates similar in shape to the current type 23. Also I see no need to replace the type 42 which will be fine after the engine issues are resolved.

To be able to fulfil this desire, you will have to break up BAE Systems. This is because BAE is now a global consortium and not just a UK manufacturer. It would be nice however if the Royal Ordinance Factories, as we now have to buy the majority of our ammunition abroad. This should be seen as a strategic necessity and not as a profit making company, unless we can also export some of the products.
I think the time is right to include a aircraft and land vehicles in a national building strategy. We shouldn’t be in a position of continuously playing catchup due to inept politicians.

its sad that the married quarters have been left out of defence priorities, some of the estates are in a right mess, imagine coming home from a deployment for her indoors to present you with a list of jobs on the home that need sorting out. servicemen/women are leaving because their families are being treated as second class citizens.

Spending 3% on defence is peanuts compared to healthcare, social and pensions. And without the peanuts one, none of the others matter, because what good is healthcare if your hospitals are getting bombed.

Lewis wrote:
“But British politicians aren’t sane people. They see option one and salivate at the money they can save and throw into the budgetary blackholes of the health and welfare budget for some easy votes. “

Since the early 70s, our young have been taught that the British Empire was evil and that the British must pay compensation for hurt feelings. This has since filtered down to our younger MPs (And some a bit older) who think that Aid is the way to go in which to apologise. The Tory party after years of character assassination is currently going further than most in which to remove that stigma.

Due to al of the above expect to see the Defence budget become even smaller. (Expect to see the Nukes gone and at least one aircraft carrier) in which to fund all of the above.

The Health budget is not a black hole, it not a luxury item, it’s also the most efficient spend of any public service. spending money on not being dead is the most important investment we make, as is we spend around £1000 per person per year less than the EU peer average on health ( that’s 82-84k per lifetime) and around 5000k per person year than the US ( which admittedly is a mad system Which spends more public spending than we do as well as the same again in private health cover, a true black hole).

£200 million tin aid to the most booming economy which supports one of the fastest military growths in the word… india the same to pakistan, a nation which harbours and allows the training of terrorists being trained to attack us.. google where u.k foreign aid goes and you WILL be very angry indeed.

Don’t waste your breath Steve. TH isn’t interested mate. Best ignore TH all together.

Yea, its a troll. Just ignore it.

why would we need to? its not as if they’re massing a vast army on its korean border, or parking its navy off the american coast. we talk up a nation we’ve no reason to a war with china is as likely as a metior hitting my car. relax

I think there is a clue right here:

https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/968513016760360963

The UK is not operating with a budget surplus, it did for 1 month, the month where all the self assessment cheques arrived.

oh dear is it becoming one of those sites where all people do, is slag each other off.trying to ‘big up’ themselves. respect people or bugger off.everyones thoughts are valid the’armchair admiral should put fantasies of a world where jeremy corbyn is in a nuthouse along with the tree huggers as for people talking outside their comfort zone, show some respect some of us have actually been in a sea war. its not nice its not about shiny systems or ‘reds under the bed’. its scary and nasty when all you have between you and davy jones’ locker is poor quality polish steel.

The UK is not trying to keep up with China, our government hardly cares about them. What we are doing is trying to keep a capable force against Russia.

Until it does. You never know with a UK goverment.

One of our own ( a regular contributor here ) wrote it which I think he did superbly.

Just made me laught….How many times have I heard that….generally after I’ve had to investigate why someone ended up being dead.

Dadarmy…If we all keep working at our MP’s and others it may never happen, even if you did think it was funny. Nothing would make me happier than for my option 1 to be made redundant.

Ws – I suspect that Option 1 is far more likely than Corbyn ever getting his grubby hands on the keys to No 10! Given his abysmal performance last June (just 4 more seats than Brown got in 2010 and then only because of some 750 voters in a few constituencies) I am mystified why some folks even think its a possibility…

For clarity that means I believe Option 2 (and more) will be the likely outcome of Gavin Williamson’s brilliant frontal attack on the Treasury …

The Fleet Air Arm is these days primarily a force of helicopters operating as ships flights in the ASW, surveillance or anti ship role, or as squadrons deployed for ASW or ASCS from flat tops. Only the helicopters of the CHF support ground forces, 3 Commando Brigade.

So it is not primarily to support ground forces. Aboard ship is a far cry from an RAF station and I for one do not want to see them merged. It’s as unrealistic as the Army Air Corps operating Typhoon or C17s.

Agree.

£200 million tin aid to the most booming economy which supports one of the fastest military growths in the word… india the same to pakistan, a nation which harbours and allows the training of terrorists being trained to attack us.. google where u.k foreign aid goes and you WILL be very angry indeed.

Remember most situations would involve NATO or other allied assets so RN would not be operating alone.

In a Falklands type scenario against any but a peer enemy a deployed Astute would have an opposing fleet heading for port.

Yes RN needs more escorts no doubt. But it also needs manpower.

subs is a good point. if you consider 50% availability that leaves 3. 1 has to be in the SSBN and another I assume has to be in British waters, leaving 1 to protect any task group.

Whilst you are right we would probably not act alone but if you follow that to it’s extreme we should drop some capability in full, since the carriers is something very few nations can bring and so it’s our part of the coalition and the others can bring the landing crafts.

We try to cover everything, but so thinly that we cover nothing properly. Afgan/Iraq showed us our army was too small to be fully effective, but the lesson was not learnt.

the job argument is also over done. the loss of jobs would be a few thousand which is a drop in the ocean compared to total jobs in the UK. These are also highly skilled people and so most, admittedly not all, will find new jobs fairly quickly, potentially by moving to other parts of the UK. Additionally if it is about jobs then the government could create many times the number of civilian roles for a fraction of the price of the military ones or gear.

I can’t the Bays going. They are cheap to run and far too useful in humanitarian aid and mothership roles e.g. Gulf MCMV. And now they have a helo hangar they can enable a River 2 to do anti piracy off Somalia and anti drug running in the Caribbean. Very useful assets.

The object of the article Julian was to outline the stark choices available and to underline how vital the services are to the Plymouth area, in particular.
For your interest I have had very positive comments from the political world as this paper was also published in the Parliamentary Review. having been included as part the Defence Committee report released in February.

Not so much ambition as responsibility to intervene in a joint force with the French in Africa most likely. Be interested to know how the US and France view the potential loss of the LPDs.

For me it is simple.

It is confused thinking by a MoD and government with no strategic plan.

We have procured the carriers.

They are power projection assets – hard or soft.

The LPD’s also power projection assets.

So HMG want to project power out there into the world.

The two go hand in hand and complement the other. Remove one and the whole is affected.

Escorts, MCMV, and the rest are extras.

These plus the SSN’s project military power.

Amphibiosity is a soft and hard power display of UK intent around the globe to various nations and especially to the far flung countries of the Commonwealth.
As an example when on Bulwark we went to the far east for a number of exercises.
In Bangladesh the Booties rocked up in their landing craft and came ashore. The locals thought it was Britain and the UN coming to rescue them from their Government. Ok not a great example …the country was probably the worst place I have seen for abject poverty but it shows what the local population think when a very large Pussers Grey War Canoe and a load of Booties rock up on your doorstep.
Then there is Bulwark evacuating UK passport holders from war zones , Rescuing migrants in the Med.
Bulwark acting as a floating OPS Center for security in the Olympic Regatta which required an at sea ferry port for the patrol boats and a landing pad for the helos. Ocean got the star turn in London but Bulwark proved the concept first during a visit a year earlier. Ocean would have been totally unsuitable for the Regatta job hence she moored up at Greenwich whilst Bulwark actually did some steaming around!

The list goes on and on…

Well they may not be updating their aircraft carrier but they are sponsoring a despotic regime in Syria, undermining the nascent sovereignty of Ukraine, intimidating the Baltic states, developing a new generation of sub orbital maneuvering MIRVS and are not above poisoning the NHS staff of the UK as collateral damage of Putin’s vindictiveness.