The Defence Committee has published its report ‘We’re going to need a bigger Navy’ following the Committee’s inquiry ‘The Navy: purpose and procurement’.
The report finds that the next decade is one of significant risk for the Royal Navy’s fleet, and one in which the UK and the Navy will face an increasingly complex international security environment.
The Committee finds that Royal Navy remains one of the most capable forces in the world and that it will be expected to take on increased responsibilities as it becomes the Government’s “tool of choice” to deliver its strategy of persistent engagement. However, successive governments’ “failure to fund the ha’porth of tar the Royal Navy needs has literally spoiled the ships”.
The fleet will continue to suffer from well documented problems with several key assets for at least the next few years:
- Delays to crucial procurement programmes mean that old ships are becoming increasingly challenging to maintain and spend too long unavailable for operations.
- Even for newer ships maintenance projects take too long. At one point in July 2021 only one of six Type 45 destroyers was not undergoing maintenance: three vessels were in refit; one was in planned maintenance; and one was “experiencing technical issues” (in layman’s English, it broke down).
- The budget for operations and maintenance is tight and will likely lead to yet more ships sitting in port, failing to deter our increasingly emboldened adversaries.
- “When ships do get to sea they act like porcupines – well defended herbivores with limited offensive capabilities”. What offensive capabilities these ships do have will be reduced even further in three years’ time when the Government retires the Harpoon anti-ship missile without a planned replacement.
- Three important vessels – RFA Argus, RFA Fort Victoria and HMS Scott – will also retire without replacements: the Navy will likely lose its current ability to provide medical care, replenish vessels at sea, and monitor the sea bed.
- The fleet is increasingly reliant on allies for many capabilities, with a limited scope to act independently, and the Government needs to do more at the political level to ensure this support will be provided when needed.
You wait six years for a new warship then three come along at once
The report finds that in 2027-28 the Navy plans to introduce three new classes of vessels (Type 26 frigates, Type 31 frigates and Fleet Solid Support ships) simultaneously. These projects must all be delivered on schedule in order to exit the period of risk that budgetary restrictions have placed the Navy in. However, they face many structural and project-specific risks, and the Ministry of Defence’s track record on delivery is far from good.
On Watch
The Committee calls for better scrutiny to ensure vessels are delivered on time. It calls for the Government to report annually to Parliament on the availability of vessels, its shipbuilding plans, and the progress of five key programmes: the construction of the Type 26 and Type 31 class frigates and the Astute and Dreadnought class submarines, and the Power Improvement Project to fix engine issues in the Type 45 destroyers.
Not enough small ships or submarines
The report finds that the Navy cannot fulfil the full ambition of the Integrated Review with its current fleet. The report calls for the escort fleet to double by acquiring more low-end capability to carry out low-end tasks, and for the Government to increase the size of the attack submarine fleet.
Supporting British Shipbuilding
The Committee finds that to deliver these new ships, the UK requires a strong domestic shipbuilding industry. It calls for the planned refresh of the National Shipbuilding Strategy to finally take on board the consistent recommendations the Government has been given over the last fifteen years: provide a steady pipeline of work for British shipyards, prioritise building vessels in the UK, work collaboratively with industry, promote exports, and actively intervene to support the modernisation of shipyards. It emphasises that the Fleet Solid Support ships that are currently being competed must be built quickly in UK shipyards.
Chair of the Defence Committee, Tobias Ellwood MP, said:
“The Royal Navy has a long and proud history protecting our nation at sea. To maintain our position as one of the leading global navies, the Government must deliver a rapid programme of modernisation and growth.
“The next ten years will prove a test for our naval fleet. The UK is faced with an increasingly hostile and unpredictable international environment but the Government is still reducing funding, retiring capability and asking the Navy to rely on increasingly elderly vessels for the next five years until new ships come in.
“The timely delivery of these new ships is crucial to plug the hole in our naval capabilities. However, the Ministry of Defence has a poor track record projects like this. We need a firm hand on the tiller to navigate us through the next decade.
“Overall our Navy needs more ships, armed with more lethal weapons and the most up to date technology. We have the shipyards and the knowhow to build them: the Government just needs to place the orders and give UK shipbuilding the commitment and confidence it needs to deliver.
“Of all the Services, the Government is most ambitious for the Navy. However, if the Government does not deliver the ships and capabilities the Navy needs, that ambition will be holed below the waterline.”
Good old Tobias, some great soundbites there:
” Holed below the water line”,
“When ships do get to sea they act like porcupines – well defended herbivores with limited offensive capabilities”,
“failure to fund the ha’porth of tar the Royal Navy needs has literally spoiled the ships”.
And the best one: ” We’re going to need a bigger Navy”, cut and paste from the Jaws script.
Indeed. Though it speaks a lot of truth; we need far more ships to maintain all of our commitments. And no 10 keeps making more and more.
Let’s see. I agree with much of what is said here… but there is an important point to be made. While the report says that the RN remains one of the most capable fighting fleets, there is an enormous difference between spot number 1, number 3, and number 10.
What we need is some La Fayette type frigates, cheaper and smaller, to take the place of the Rivers, so that they may return home and the Type 31s focus on protecting our lower end battle groups, such as the new LRGs, the Type 26s on the carrier groups and occasional lone ventures. Doubling from our current 18 with lower end warships would not take double the budget, at most the orders for all 12 LF-style vessels would cost £2-3bn. Yes, a lot when said plainly but not that much when you take into account a £7bn (saying 24bn is rather nonsense) budget increase. The fact of the matter is that if we don’t boost our spending and use our greater power as deterrence, it will cost us a lot more in a war, even if we eventually win.
This report does highlight a key issue with politics in this country at the moment. Lots of sound bites and targets, but not much in the way of concrete policies capable of delivering on the ambitions.
The government has said that we will build a new frigate, the T32, and a replacement for the T45’s, the T83. Whilst these annoucements were welcome they came as a surprise and from reading between the lines I think many in the MoD and RN were surprised as well. Not a good place to start from, expecially as there is properly no funding line, let alone actual funding.
Without the update to the National Shipbuilding Strategy supported by a serious up lift in funding I see serious risks in delivering the growth required to the fleet. As far as I can see there is pretty much zero chance of increasing the SSN fleet because the yard simply does not have the capacity.
Yard / supply chain capacity is an issue. All the targets in the world are meaningless without a real increase in design and production capacity and that will take time. As I keep pointing out it takes 15 years or so to train experienced engineers capable of deisgning and developing the technology that not only goes into the ships but also is used to produce them.
Nevertheless, there does appear to be increasing political support for an increase in the RN’s capability and size. If this support holds for the next 20 years then there may a real opportunity to actually deliver the kind of expansion suggested above.
Cheers CR
True that, CR. It seems to be quite often that the RN do not get what they ask for, but randomly get things like the Type 32 which, frankly put, I don’t think they’re terribly excited about. Over a year on from its announcement we still have no remote idea what it’ll be.
Hi CR
Easiest would be to build 2nd batch of Type 31…… Boris seemed to be the only person to of known about Type 32.. his misspeak I think……do we really need a third hull design??
Release the handbrake on Type 26 & 31 production
Thanks Ian
Hi Ian,
🙂 That was my reading of it as well.
However I think it has given the navy an opportunity to prehaps tweak the T31 as an autonmous vehicle (UV) carrier. As it stands the T31 has a mission bay below the flight deck and a boat bay forward of the hangar. The boat bay is capable of deploying autonomous vehicles. The boat bay deck space is constrained by the funnel uptakes and height of the forward part of the bay may be limited by the VLS.
So a partial redesign that retains the same hull and systems may allow for a greater UV payload. Also given the rapid development of these systems and the possibility of them carrying ever more capable weapons there may be a need to improve / enhance the below deck magazine (currently supporting the helicopter flight).
Of course, the opportunity for such a redesign is limited if the build drum beat is to be maintained so I suspect that any such redesign will be limited or there will be serious delays in the programme.
Cheers CR
I’ve never understood why there was never a batch 2 type 21 those ships with their alleged shortcomings ironed out would have been a perfect stopgap before the t31
I’m still of the view that T32 was a Borisism and the project was created to make want he said true.
That said 5 more biggish frigates would be very welcome in the fleet.
Hi Supportive Bloke,
A Borisism 🙂 Plenty of them flying around it seems…
As for creating a project around a slip of the tongue, well politically a necessity, programmatically it is somewhat disruptive, but as you say 5 more frigates will be very welcome.
As I say in my response to Ian above there is a risk that the navy will take the opportunity to tweak the design perhaps a little too much and introduce delays…
Cheers CR
That would be against the argument I put forward of building trust with Treasury of delivering capital programs.
I sincerely hope they are simply roughly the same thing with the Mk41 fitted and **maybe** a 5” main gun. Maybe a spare MTU set as well for even more power generation for laser weapons?
Other than that leave well alone.
and bump up the price
A few more destroyers would cheer the royal navy no end
A couple more T26 minus the TA plus SM6?
And later in the program a report on the toilet habits of bears and the shocking revelation of the size of the Pope`s hat !
and slippers
Totally agree the navy needs to be much bigger. The fact is that we are entering a new cold war but still acting under the peace dividend after the old cold war finished. There is a lot of ‘the west is aggressive’ coming from China and Russia as they increase their armed forces – perhaps a bit more of ‘in response to the increased threat due to increased militarisation by China and Russia, the UK feelsthat there is a need to respond’…
See my above comment regarding smaller patrol frigates. The following is what we need:
10 properly armed, near 100-cell VLS destroyers.
10 Type 26, increase last batch from 2 to 4.
5 Type 31 and 5 Type 31 Batch 2 Autonomous orientated ship (if we want to be effective we don’t want the Type 32 having a new bull)
10-12 smaller La Fayette type frigates.
For boats, we need 8 Astutes and 8 AIP.
Whether we realise this before a war or during a war will determine if this costs tens of billions or hundreds of them. Doing something on the spot is a lot harder.
Seems to be a generally good report.
Though how do they manage to turn a short report into a 330Mb download is a sight to behold.
The capability that I am surprised was not mentioned was protection of the UK littoral zone – both middle size patrol boats for fisheries etc, and our offshore energy infrastructure eg windfarms, which is now becoming key and are vulnerable.
The Defense selct Committee has warned and advised successive administrations over the years. Unfortunately the government accepts the reports but rarely acts on them, why? Unless Joe public kick up a fuss about the nature of our Defense posture which changes every 10 years the government will not act as it is not seen as a vote winner. Education and the NHS and care services will always be at the top of the agenda and rightly so. However the first responsibility of any government is to protect the people and the country.
Procurement policy has to change as billions are wasted every year, projects are delayed and then reduced or cancelled altogether.
Foreign policy and defence policy must go hand in hand and this country has to decide once and for all where we sit on the world stage and Taylor our defence strategy accordingly. Regional conflicts and we are in danger of this happening could well be state wars not the conflicts of old I’m some far away 3rd world country. But in the far east China and closer to home, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and the Artic circle. We can never be in all these areas at once supporting our allies. Let’s face even the US is struggling. We must protect our sea lanes and air space before we embark on fool Hardy posturing with the Russians.
this is something we really do need to do and it is beneficial to UK PLC
We have some good ships on order but need to increase the volumes
the 4 types I think we need to really focus on are (other designs available):
The small boats are useful across a range of activities from RM raiding parties to torpedo boats.
The multi role is critical as the GLAM and KD designs can be improved upon I think, the ability to be a helicopter carrier, hospital, stores ship or ampnibious assault ship (with S2S connectors or other) is pretty impressive. the key here is volume, we need 13 of these ships to replace all non tide RFA and amphibious ships.
Corvettes really hit a sweet spot for me they are capable and are good VFM if built in the right volumes
So future navy could look like
So this will cost £5bn each year over the 25 year lifecycle, provides the required Drumbeat and is very conservative as the actual costs of build are way less in the main. Out of a £17bn equipment programme this should be doable. It doesn’t make the Navy massively bigger but it does restructure it for the future.
Well I mean. It does make the navy massively bigger since we’re going from 18 warships to planning 24 to 37. And 25 corvettes. But, realistically, this is the direction we need to go in. As much as we want to economise on fewer classes, sometimes it’s not possible to do it to the extent desired.
Hpw much would it cost to recruit and train the sailors ? What would be the operating costs of the new ships ? There’s no mention of FSS. MCMV. LSG, anti ship. land attack missiles. F35 etc. What extra infrastructure would be needed to support a larger navy. Plus the Army and the RAF would rightly demand the same budget hike therefore whatever the total cost was would have to be trippled.
As a rule of thumb £500m will get you 10,000 professionals including basic training and personal equipment. The new type 31 will have around 100 personnel. A frigate will cost around £10m a year to maintain. So staff and maintenance combined will be around £15m + a little bit more for miscellaneous
Some capital costs might be needed to accommodate the extra ships but there is plenty of spare space at our ports given how much the RN has shrunk. There is no automatic increase in the budget for the Army and RAF if the RN goes up. If the government want to prioritise one branch over the others it is perfectly capable of doing so.
Thanks for that. Where did you find the £500m for 10.000 regulars figure ? On RAF and Army absolutely nothing automatic about them receiving equal share but if they didn’t they would not be happy. There have been occasional hints of concentrating on the maritime role from around No 10 but the leadership of the RN were not enthusiastic. They may be concerned by how the RAF and Army would view such a decision.
I seem to recall a piece not long ago that have the average cost as £48,500 per person in the services, actually might have been to do with army costs but I think the figure of £50k per person holds up quite well regardless of which service you look at.
RN had been against Corvettes for decades now, being that we’re a blue water navy it’d probably make more sense to go with five additional T31 and make sure they are all fully equipped, not just fitted for but not with.
Amazing!
You lot worked all that out by yourselves??
Myself I’d have a full public enquiry where Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Clegg, May, Johnson are all grilled as to why they let the RN reduce to this state numbers wise.
Or are they off over the hills making millions writing their memoirs.
👍
how did we find 6 billion for two giant aircraft carriers yet ships are too expensive and 12 type 45’s has to be cut to 6?
I agree. It seems treasonous the way UK forces have been so run down & undermined. Away from public pronouncements Russia & China have been very hostile in many ways for decades & our weakness only makes them bolder.
and how come the admiralty get away without their share of critism?
👍
The end of history mindset has done more harm as if we had bought all 12 Type 45 Destroyers and all 6 Fort Victorias, we wouldn’t have the problems we do have now
There is opportunity to fix this when we order the Type 83s.
The reason we didn’t order all the Fort Victoria’ was as after the Falklands we made the Type 23 frigate a fully combat-capable ship as opposed to a light anti-sub sub operating under the cove of a Fort-Victoria with Sea Wolf VLS (Fort Victoria actually had it fitted!). In the end we ended up with two and then Ding Dong Cameroun decided we should sell one of them (Fort George) and cleverly keep a couple of old, worn out and on the verge of sinking Fort I’s
Frankly the RFA should ideally have
5 Fort Victoria Class Multi-Role Replenishment Ship, 8 Tide Class Fast Fleet Tanker and 11 Wave Class Fast Fleet Tanker
Unless there was a marked improvement in remuneration, leave , terms and conditions you would never be able to man a fifth of the numbers you’ve quoted there. It just not what people are prepared to do for the mediocre salaries that are on offer these days . Competition from the commercial sector – 1 for 1 leave , better accommodation standards leaves the RFA option falling short of appealing to the majority
Why? 19 fast fleet tankers and 5 more multi-role replenishment ships would be a massively imbalanced RN:RFA fleet. That would be the same number of fleet tankers and a third of the dry stores ships as the US MSC with a fraction of the fleet to support.
….and equipped the T45’s properly. They are supposed to have 16 Mk41 VLS in addition to the Aster 15/30s and the (now to be fitted) Sea Ceptor launchers. Currently they’re well capable of tracking a ballistic missile and telling everyone else where it is, but they can’t shoot at it themselves. And of course most of the time now they are sailing without and anti-ship missiles.
We should also increase our T26s beyond 8, and they, likewise, need an offensive anti-ship missile system and onboard anti-submarine weapons given that ASW is, supposedly, their principle role.
same as the proposed sister to ocean
Regarding the comments in the report, I have to say it seems straight-talking and urgently needs backing up with progress
We are all missing the essential truth here, when and how will this be funded? 2.2% of GDP is unlikely to cut the mustards. How might such a plan impact the RAF and Army? I’m guided by the general NATO narrative (I stress general) that post cold war force levels were likely to be about 50%. That means circa 24 frigate /destroyers. Although, 7 Astutes is well below this threshold. ln most respects , the RN has faired well with 2 world class fleet carriers, a planned F35 fleet to rival Harrier numbers in the 80’s and a commitment to 24 surface combat ship.
I look at the RAF fast jet force by way of comparison from 31 squadrons to 8 today, C 130 j retirement , and an understrength commitment to E7 Wedgetail.
We are all missing the essential truth here, when and how will this be funded? 2.2% of GDP is unlikely to cut the mustards. How might such a plan impact the RAF and Army? I’m guided by the general NATO narrative (I stress general) that post cold war force levels were likely to be about 50%. That means circa 24 frigate /destroyers. Although, 7 Astutes is well below this threshold. ln most respects , the RN has faired well with 2 world class fleet carriers, a planned F35 fleet to rival Harrier numbers in the 80’s and a commitment to 24 surface combat ship.
I look at the RAF fast jet force by way of comparison from 31 squadrons to 8 today, C 130 j retirement , and an understrength commitment to E7 Wedgetail.
and now we’ll need to fork out billions for the tempest in the future but theres no vertical take off version so our carriers will be flying f 35’s which will be obsolete by then
I fear you’re point is likely to be spot on Andy!
Much of what I’ve been saying for years. The escort fleet needs to be nearer 40 with at least a dozen submarines to be a credible offensive force with the necessary strength in depth to cope with attrition. The uplift announced earlier in the year was a welcome change in direction but nothing more than tinkering on the sidelines.
Talk is cheap let us see what they bring to the table in the way of curing the problem/s as it is not just the RN that needs fixing all of our armed forces and the supporting infrastructure needs looking at.
Surely one of the best ways to increase the practical size of the navy without building lots of new ships is to increase availability, the crewing model for the OPVs, Minehunters plus that being used for HMS Montrose shows we can increase number of days at sea by better crew resourcing.
If T31 can be delivered quickly it also gives an option to go for a second batch, as general purpose frigates I think they’d stack up well against foreign counterparts if they were actually properly equipped.
Lastly the batch 1 River are all getting on, do we go back and get a batch 3 to replace them, relatively cheap to build,. operate and crew, good way to keep fleet numbers up and take the pressure off frigates and destroyers.
A larger RN is surely feasible on current trends. Aren’t newer ships more automated, cheaper to maintain? A T31 has half the crew of a T23 so assuming well managed turnover and training can we not realistically expect 5xT31 plus 5xT32 as the 5 T23 GPs go? A River 2 half the crew again. The trick is to do this while controlling the cost of expensive weapons and systems and increasing pay in line with skills.
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the Arrowhead 140 hull decision.