Until recently, the RN maintained a meaningful force of at least 6 ships based in Bahrain. For a variety of reasons, this force may soon just comprise of two ships.
Background
There are a wide variety of UK interests in the region, but most important is ensuring the freedom of maritime trade. The UK Maritime Component Command (UKMCC) is responsible for Royal Navy warships, aircraft and personnel deployed in the Middle East maritime theatre. The approximately 2.5M sq miles of international waters stretch from the Suez Canal to the Red Sea, across the northern Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Oman and up into the Persian Gulf.
The presence of a frigate in the region can trace its roots back to the Armilla Patrol began in 1980 to protect merchant shipping from being targeted deliberately or accidentally during the Iran-Iraq war. With an escort fleet numbering more than 75 ships, the RN had 3 frigates or destroyers in the Gulf (a commitment that actually required 9 ships, counting those in transit, maintenance or being prepared to deploy). Apart from the major participation in the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, this presence has been on a generally downward trajectory although at least one warship or RFA has been rotated in and out of the region on Operation Kipion almost continuously.
In 2018 the RN decided to forward base a frigate permanently in Bahrain, starting with HMS Montrose, later replaced by HMS Lancaster in 2022. The policy has been broadly successful with the ships achieving high availability, maintained in Bahrain at local facilities with support from contractors flown out from the UK. It is also popular with sailors who have predictability about when they will be at home or deployed. The Kipion frigate has been mostly been under the command of CFT150 and mounted very successful counter-narcotics and anti-piracy operations, providing reassurance to mariners and making defence diplomacy visits to Gulf states, India and the Seychelles.
The UK Maritime Component Command (UKMCC) based at the Naval Support Facility (NSF) in Bahrain is responsible for Royal Navy warships, aircraft and personnel deployed in the Middle East maritime theatre. The UKNSF is a bespoke facility built at Mina Salman port with accommodation and welfare facilities for up to 500 RN personnel. (Initially to be called HMS Juffair, resurrecting the name of the base in Bahrain closed in the 1970s – but the name was never used.) Construction cost around £27M with the government of Bahrain believed to have contributed about 60% of the cost. In 2020 the adjacent quay was also refurbished allowing the frigate or vessels up to destroyer size to come alongside, close to the UKNSF.
In 2023 the UKMCC was responsible for about 700 personnel and the force comprised of HMS Lancaster (GP frigate), HMS Chiddingfold, HMS Middleton, HMS Bangor (MCMVs) and RFA Cardigan Bay (employed as the afloat MCM support base). For over 15 years the main focus of the group deployed in Bahrain and the RN mine warfare battle staff has been to counter mines that could be laid by Iran in an attempt to disrupt shipping in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. RFA Cardigan Bay provided logistical support and a command platform for the force of 4 RN MCMVs, (reduced to 3 in 2023) and the small number of USN minehunters in the region.
No Bay out
Reflecting the wider struggles of the RN, the footprint in Bahrain has been fast reducing. RFA Cardigan Bay was withdrawn to the Mediterranean theatre in April 2024 to join the US-led humanitarian aid operation to Gaza. She was subsequently relieved by RFA Mounts Bay in August as the mission focus shifted towards possible evacuation operations. Cardigan Bay eventually made it to Falmouth in October and was to have a major overhaul but it has been determined she will be laid up and the refit deferred to 2026, mainly due to the shortage of people.
There is no hope of either of the other two Bay-class replacing her in Bahrain. There is something of a maintenance backlog in Falmouth as RFA Argus was supposed to complete her Assisted Maintenance Period in December but emerging defects have delayed this until March. Work on Argus (and ensuring she has a crew) is the priority as it is intended she will participate in at least some of the CSG25 deployment. RFA Mounts Bay has just returned from the Mediterranean and will enter refit in Falmouth in January. At this point, RFA Lyme Bay will be the sole active amphibious vessel in UK service. Besides the problems of ageing ships being run hard, the dismal failure of Ministers to address the problems of the RFA is now having a strategic impact out of all proportion to the tiny costs involved in paying its staff properly.
MCMV to MAS
The unfortunate accident in January that seriously damaged HMS Bangor has accelerated the demise of the crewed minehunter fleet in Bahrain. Bangor began repair in dry dock in the summer but even when the damage is rectified she will be out of date for mandatory Lloyd’s inspections which are due every 5 years. Her withdrawal had been planned for 2025 anyway and she will not return to operations in Bahrain. Whether she will return to the UK under her own power or be carried back on a heavy-lift ship has yet to be decided. HMS Chiddingfold is also close to her 5-year inspection date and will soon have to return to the UK for maintenance, having last been refitted in 2018. This will leave HMS Middleton as the sole MCMV in Bahrain.
Mine warfare in the Royal Navy is in the middle of a complex transition from crewed MCMVs to Maritime Autonomous Systems (MAS). As we have observed before, this method keeps people out of harm’s way and has proven to be more efficient at the core mine hunting and disposal task and has significant advantages. Earlier this year, the RN provided feedback on initial trials with autonomous mine hunting in the Gulf. The range, reach and resolution of sonars deployed from the boats is much superior to sonars mounted MCMVs. The increased clarity of new sensor systems is so much better that it is pushing doctrinal norms of object classification. The UUVs in the new toolkit can also go deeper, search faster and provide much better imagery of mine-like objects. The new Saab MuMNS mine disposal ROV is also far more capable than the one-shot Sea Fox systems used by the MCMVs. Overall the successful operational evaluation of the USVs, TSSS and ROVs has given the RN confidence to begin procuring the next block of the MHC programme.
However MAS is not a panacea and as we previously predicted, the RN found that “recovery and launching and sense of packages from USVs is exceptionally complex, especially in the interaction between the platform, the sea and seabed”. Unless there is a larger supporting platform nearby or air assets available, “the attrition rate of USVs must be assumed to be higher in a contested environment, because we won’t have that oceanic understanding outside of short-range detection of potential adversaries.” Problems cannot be rectified quickly without sailors on board and “Sailor-driven success is not an option for successful MAS, systems complexity implies a continued reliance on crewed operations”. MAS also still have to overcome challenges in operating in EM-denied environments, generating SQEP to operate and maintain the specialist equipment, limitations imposed by weather and data bandwidth issues.
In summary, MAS offers huge opportunities in mine warfare with some important caveats but is far from proven and a long way from being able to provide an operational capability to fully replace the MCMVs in the Persian Gulf. The need for motherships is foundational to deploying MHC beyond UK waters and with deep irony, uncrewed mine-hunting development is currently hamstrung by a lack of crews. Shortage of personnel is the main reason RFA Stirling Castle is laid up and there will be no Bay-class RFA in the Gulf for a while at least.
The forward-deployed frigate, HMS Lancaster was last refitted in 2019 and is coming close to the end of her service life, given her age she is very unlikely to be extended in service and will decommission next year as planned. HMS Iron Duke had been earmarked as Lancaster’s replacement but as the RN has been forced to decommission HMS Westminster, Argyll and Northumberland, priority must be given to operations closer to home. It looks unlikely there will be a frigate based in Bahrain from the second half of 2025 until possibly a Type 31 frigate is available in a few year’s time.
Big picture
The rapidly changing strategic balance in the Middle East seems, for now at least, to be broadly in the UK’s favour with the malign influence of Iran weakened by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the near-destruction of its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza respectively. However, in the two theatres where the RN is struggling nothing much has changed. The Iranians still have the power to blockade the Persian Gulf and may see this as a ‘trump card’ of increased importance, given its weakness elsewhere. As President Trump is quite reasonably demanding that US allies carry their weight, it is not good timing to be reducing UK forces in the Gulf. The USN has never had great mine-hunting capabilities and the RN presence in Bahrain has provided benefit to both navies out of all proportion to its cost.
The Iranian Houthi proxies in Yemen have taken a battering from US naval air power but are not defeated and continue to threaten shipping in the Red Sea, still impacting global trade. After the successful deployment of HMS Diamond, the RN has withdrawn from the Red Sea and left the defence of merchant vessels to the EU and US.
Under existing plans, the CSG25 deployment will provide a temporary surge in RN assets in the Middle East. HMS Prince of Wales and the carrier strike group are due to pass through the Red Sea next year on their way to the Asia Pacific. Assuming the situation does not change, whether this is taken as an opportunity to conduct offensive operations against the Houthis or the group is rushed through in a defensive posture will be a test of government strategic vision and will.
Main image: A full house in Bahrain, Feb 2021. RN, RM and RFA personnel deployed on Kipion muster in front of HMS Shoreham, HMS Brocklesby, HMS Penzance, HMS Chiddingfold, RFA Cardigan Bay and HMS Montrose.
All this talk of decline but aren’t the T31s meant to be being forward based here? Isn’t it part of their role to contribute to keeping the Suez-Persian Gulf area clear and open for access to the Indo-Pacific? And ahead of the CSG 2025 this area should be gearing up? Can this base handle the Astute subs?
You will be lucky to see a T31 deployed before 2030.
👍
Indo Pacific base for RN subs will be HMAS Stirling just south of Perth Its a full fledged naval base not a ‘facility’
With lovely friendly beaches nearby, but a few hungry sharks as well.
HMAS Stirling. Nice Base but a long way from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.
https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/releases/2024-08-22/arrival-uss-hawaii-ssn-776-first-aukus-nuclear-powered-submarine-maintenance-activity-australia
AUKUS maintenance facility as you cant do that in Persian gulf- which was my reply.
Unlike T26 GP frigates, the T31 has no sonar so should never be deployed in the Gulf where there is a serious submarine threat from Iran.
A seemingly endless litany of poor management of assets and people.
Not great for defence exports either…..
Or retaining expensively trained people who do t have much to do other than crew QEC & T45….
Used to be
Join the navy – see the world
Now
Join the navy – see a classroom/barracks?
Boris did say one of two things that were right (as well as a lot of nonsense) and I do think that we would have had T31B2/T32 to get numbers back up as he was clear that he wanted RN to be the preeminent naval force in Europe. He did also get the orders placed for T31 and T26B2 – even if Rishi announced the latter.
We are now in a situation where we cannot even do the basic stuff we have to do.
Interesting that a River can’t be used for this role as I’m assuming it is too vulnerable to be there. Which does make me question the role of the Rivers other than doing constabulary work. They may be cheap to run but are useless in a fight with only one small calibre gun. The solution isn’t a bigger gun and a few missiles as it isn’t a warship. I’d really hope that River B1’s are replaced with T32 and B2s are kept for coastal and constabulary work in very low threat areas
They are not even safe in the constabulary role with the advent of drone warfare. An immediate update of all the 30mm mounts in the RN to the none penetrating Mk4 Bofor’s would seem to be cost effective and increase self defence to respectable levels with the 3P ammo.
Even the 40mm Bofors doesn’t provide 360 degree cover mounted up front.
The risk of upgunning them is that politicians think they are a warship.
Basically like for like in this case even a politician isn’t that thick
Upgrading to 40mm with 3p is not a bad suggestion even if there is no 360 degree coverage, 30mm itself is not that bad either, especially with twin mount
the west will have to get better at jamming drones and the rivers need to make full use of drones for themselves. they are not warships agreed.
Why question the role of the OPVs, especially ones that do presence, constabulary, training, HADR and red force exercises, and can do commando transport and helicopter refuelling? You are right that they aren’t warships any more than Magpie, Cutlass or Protector, and I’ve never heard anyone question their roles on here.
The problem is that the criminal element now can have drones.
And know that a simple grenade dropped in the right place would do a huge amount of damage….
At least for now the kind of drones available to criminals aren’t likely to stand up to a 30mm gun or even the miniguns for that matter. Do you really think we’ve reached a point where criminals will stand toe to toe with a 2,000 ton Royal Navy ship? It’s normal to board the smugglers’ ships using the PAC 24s because when the authorities turn up, they aren’t stupid enough to fight back.
It is an assumption that nobody fights back – which has held so far.
It would change the narco equation if a small warship or cutter was taken out or badly damaged like that and a drone hit is much more likely than a gun fight which even a River would almost certainly win just with the 30mm and a couple of GPMG (I think the mini guns were retired).
But even that is assumptions: as the Narco guys have RPGs and old SAMs.
A drone attack is survivable for the attack controller and it isn’t beyond all reason to use a swarm of them either. Money is not something the narco guys lack so ordering a pile of high end drones is absolutely within their capabilities.
I don’t think it is a threat you can casually dismiss anymore.
Then you are forced to use either groups of cutters/OPVs or something much heavier duty.
Sure soft kill measures are probably the best defence but kinetics are also needed just in case the drones have been semi hardened.
I don’t like to give ideas but it is not even necessary to have a grenade. There are much more easier ways to get something that can explode.
And there is no need for expensive drones either.
I think the priority for Rivers would be to have a 360º anti drone coverage and sensors to track drones plus electronic warfare.
Note that a guided drone like it has been seen in Ukraine can hit precise vulnerable spots in ships and vehicles.
All good stuff but the ship can turn to unmask the gun; the 30mm just doesn’t have the range or flexibility given by the 3P ammo on the mk4.
I agree giving the oppo ideas is not a good thing.
Which why I stopped at a generic ‘grenade’…
I do agree that anti drone sensors are key to this.
I’d sell three of the 5 batch 2 River’s (we need two to sustain a permanent presence in the Falklands). This would release crew for useful ships like the MCM and a bay. Assuming that they are worth 50% of their build costs, the sale would raise £180m which should be enough to fit most or all T31’s with a sonar enabling them to be proper general purpose frigates in areas like the Gulf.
Wishful thinking on that sale price, and Bays are still RFA manned and we have retired most of our MCMs, there is not a lack of crew for those.
Sounds like a very sensible suggestion
River class is the ultimate treasury warship – adds to perception of numbers, no expensive capability, but able to be driven around pretending to do important stuff with small inexpensive crew. lucky to be able to defend itself against anything more than basic rifles and machine guns, anything more and its useless. Narco groups watching Houthis and Ukrainians, learning and going to be tooled up soon to deal with anything like a river class with ease. A WW2 sloop would be more use…
“ Boris did say one of two things that were right (as well as a lot of nonsense) and I do think that we would have had T31B2/T32 to get numbers back up”
Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson had more than enough time as PM to order a second batch of T31s or T32. He had a thumping great majority and did nothing with it to benefit this country.
He could have increased defence spending to 2.5% or 3%, ended the RFA pay fiasco.
New Labour wasn’t great for defence but the collapse in the RN and RFA over the past 24 months is entirely down to poor decision making from 2010 onwards.
When they announced that Albion and Bulwark were being decommissioned, I cynically stated that they would now only need 4 MRSS to replace the amphibious ships, and if they only wanted to pay for two or three MRSS, they could lay up one or two of the Bays and pronounce them too far gone 18 months later, like Albion. I was being sarcastic. I didn’t think they would actually do it; the Bays are just too useful.
There comes a point where any attempt at sarcasm or satire becomes overtaken by the depths to which reality plummets. Just when you think you can’t be any further disappointed, you learn another lesson.
I agree that there’s a real risk that new force levels become future force levels. The area that this worries me most is the T26. We are now down to 6 frigates with a towed sonar and I could see politicians deciding that this proves that we only need 6 going forward and offering 2 to the Norwegians in the hope of them buying T26.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Navy was offered the choice of dropping to six T26s in exchange for 5 T32s.
The TERRIFYING decline of the RN continues apace while our politicians continue to hose money away on foreign net zero projects abroad, carbon capture and the more usual foreign aid budget during the most dangerous world picture that I can remember.
I was on Armilla patrol in 81 and supported SSN opps from Bahrain at the turn of the century It is a good location for a forward base but only if you have the necessary forces to use it.
I am probably a more irate tax payer than the one that inhabits this site having had a lifetime time of working in the public sectors the worst of which was the sainted NHS as an engineering manager trying to stop the system from wasting money by the bucketful.
The whole nation is going downhill fast wether its Military or NHS and I’ve said for a long time now this isn’t a Labour party it’s a liability Green party But no one would listen their more on Putin’s side than Ukraine they won’t sit comfortably with Trump and financially the UK is almost hit the bottom with NO finances to do anything for the Military even the top generals and Admirals know this by the middle of next year if there isn’t a war we will end up like a third world or at best like Ireland.
I blame the School system personally.
Leftist Teachers, woke schools and the outlawing of British patriotism, the very glue of society and shared culture. Once you say your flag is garbage and a shameful artifact, it’s game over. What’s to fight for in 2024-25 UK? Nothing of worth except perhaps family. But King and country? Get real.
Best to get out while the going is good, 2030s forecasts show UK is not even a shadow of its former self. Far far from it.
While I agree the situation is bad, do be serious. Ridiculous hyperbole accomplishes nothing. Also, your example is backwards; the third world is full of tanks, warships, and fighter jets, while Ireland has none of the above.
Cant be like Ireland . They are a neutral, not in Nato and rely on being part of the British Iles ( since roman times when the main islands of Britannia were called Albion and Hibernia) and its defence perimeter
Crikey, doesn’t time fly !, I bet you are still sixteen at heart though…. or is that a bit deep ?
I know what too deep is and it certainly does.
lol…. welcome (back) to the fold. I used to enjoy Deep32’s comments, he was sorely missed on both sites……..
Sadly not me always been sixteen and have been assured that now I am older than fifty five I am not required to grow up.
At 55 you were very young in the Armilla patrols… I get that you might have been older though…. all a bit misty though.
Sixty two soon was Kev the boy in Honkyfid 1980 catching Ii’s and chasing pirates allegedly
1 Bay mothballed already? Nuts
Mothballing one of the most useful and well used ships in the RFA without even doing the programmed maintenance she is ready to rotate out in place of the others more than worrying.
Another penny pinching decision with no overall sense at all. I can see regenerating her as being much harder when she has been mothballed too.
Very, very worrying.
And no sign of HMG gripping the RFA pay crisis. Which as everyone points out would cost peanuts to resolve and get some of these big grey hulls showing a presence.
And not forgetting that we sold Largs Bay over a decade ago, so 4 become 2. Albions go from 2 to 0, T23 went from 16 to 8, Ocean, Forts, Hunts and Sandowns virtually all gone and that’s just the Navy.
RAF fast jets decimated, Helicopters, Tanks…. hell the list is near endless and so very worrying especially seeing how this latest bunch of clowns are reneging on virtually all their election promises.
I think the only reason ships are built for the RN is to keep the Scots on side
It really does look that way, quite honestly.
In 1999 HM the Queen allowed the new scottish parliament to use the ‘style’ of Queen of Scots as well as her ‘other UK title’, King Charles is the new King of Scots. That keeps them onside.
The surface warships are built in Scotland because thats where the workforce is Submarines are built in Barrow for the same reason.
The French, Italians, germans will give the same reasons for their warship building locations
In the wake of the Albion and Bulwark announcement, having a Bay mothballed is beyond ridiculous…
WTF is the government playing at? They resolved the train drivers’ pay dispute within 10mins of gaining power. The cost of giving the RFA a decent settlement is peanuts by comparison.
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger
They are sabotaging the carriers. Without RFA no carriers deployment.
No they’re not, that would imply purpose in not resolving the RFA dispute. I think it’s just crass incompetence on their part.
So they are fast punishing farmers, giving loads of money to their pet causes and can’t see anything here?
It is not a complicated thing. The equation is quite simple.
I am sorry but incompetence is not believable.
Punishing farmers ? What , no more Clarksons Farm… as he openly said the farm was his tax dodge and clearly many others do so as well. Some privileged groups have to pay for say increased GDP on defence back to what it was in 2010
In Portugal we don’t have inheritance tax, it is considered immoral by vast parts of population.
Its not just Farmers its ALL private business. They are Marxists. New elections now before they trash what’s left. We need a 2 million march ( peaceful) on Whitehall next year.
And Tories were already punishing private business specially freelancers.
The England of Industrial Revolution is truly dead. Now everyone is a Fabian..
A joke i posted in another site : Give the Falklands to Argentina in exchange for Millei.
If you think there’s going to be an election in less than 3 1/2 years you’re delusional. You can march, sign petitions or whatever but the facts are a government with a huge majority isn’t having an election at a potentially bad time for themselves.
Spot on, Jonno, except it’s not just “Marxists”. They are “Marxist Globalists”. Therefore they hate and are determined to destroy any kind of robust nationalism and cultural identity whatsoever. We have the same thing over on this side of the Pond. It all got going in the schools, ya know?
Lol, and then some. How come the Leninst-party-state ( which deviated from Marxism) created all those nationality/cultural states in their Soviet Union
Indeed one ukrainian rose to the top of the Soviet state. Brezhnev and before him Khrushchev was a lover of Ukrainian culture too…. picture wearing the ukrainian vyshyvanka
Britain via the RN must have ruled a quarter of the globe and was exposed to a huge number of cultures and nationalities and evident even today and yet some have a total unawareness of the rest of the world shown by Will – a product of the narrow and uneducated american school system
The georgian Dzhugashvili and his henchman Voroshilov in Tajik clothing
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJoCT2KXcAA85m7?format=jpg
I couldn’t agree more.
too.
Can anyone recall a ship in the last 15 years that the RN have laid up for 18 months that they have successfully got operational again? Albion and Bulwark come to mind, but they weren’t supposed to be laid up, rather kept in a state of extended readiness. Wasn’t the maintenance done first? Daring isn’t back yet. Maybe some of the other escorts in the middle of the last decade; they always seemed to be awaiting something or other.
Daring has had PiP but reversing all the STOROBing is going to be a slow painful process as it will require skills and trades that are needed on T26 to be diverted.
We desperately need another fighty hull and in spite of all of the costs and issues, regenerating Daring will be the fasted way of achieving that.
Given the emerging threats we also need at the AAW that RN can get and having six state of the art hulls is not a bad place to be.
You should have had a bare minimum of 8 AAW destroyers and ideally 10. It was originally supposed to be 12 but I knew you’d never get that, and so I would have settled for 10. Oh well maybe someday somebody will get some stones and do what is necessary.
Of the top of my head I can’t remember which one but one of the River B 1’s was laid up for I think three years and then brought back into service but it’s not a great example I know
HMS Severn was decommissioned on 27 October 2017. Although it didn’t return to operations until 2020, its active refit started May 2019. Not three years sat about waiting, but about 19 months, so yes it does qualify. My obvious point is that a supposedly temporary lay up is far more likely to become a permanent one than not. HMS Severn is the only one I can think of which was the opposite: a permanent lay up that became temporary.
Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t trying to disprove your argument as HMS Seven isn’t really a war ship and not a real fair comparison plus sum what an exception. I get your point and totally agree that when it’s gone it’s gone for good
HMS Mersey and HMS Tyne didn’t quite reach that stage. Retention is one of the benefits of Brexit!
Not sure about length of time laid up but Ocean underwent a costly refit only to be sold to Brazil as she was deemed to be no longer viable…. Very strange when all things are considered. Was it £80 million spent ? can’t remember and I hate to have to rely on copy and paste.
Ocean was withdrawn from service due to multiple mechanical failures, unsurprising given she was close to her 20 year design life. The RN then managed to get the Brazilians to buy her for £85million, and she then had a refit in the U.K. before heading for her new home port in Brazil.
Which is exactly what I said… Isn’t it ? Funny how such a clapped out ship was able to be fixed and then sold to another navy.
What am I missing ?
Wrong.
You stated, Ocean had an £80m refit while owned by the RN, and then sold to Brazil.
Reality, she was sold by the RN to Brazil for £85m. The Brazilians then paid for a refit to make her sea worthy.
What part of “20 year design life” didn’t you understand? She was built to commercial, not naval standards, which is why she was so cheap in the first place (only £154m).
Yes mate…. whatever…. I’m happy to take your Aggressive shuff…. It’s entirely normal for you to be like that ….. so I’ve noticed hundreds of times on here.
Having your levels of anger and rage on a public forum is so sad really.
I hope you find peace one day.
Maybe you should bother using Google to look things up and do some research rather than waffling off the top of your head?…
You must have been a nightmare to manage, throwing such a hissy fit for having your errors corrected.
You’re also projecting, I’m not angry or rage filled. I have no feelings towards you whatsoever, to me you’re nothing.
The feeling is entirely mutual, your disrespect and pedantic behaviour towards so many others is rather a bore but sadly, every site has it’s keyboard bully.
He has a problem with a Trident stuck up his backside for a long time, that’s the cause of his illness
She was pretty much buggered if my memory serves me correctly, she was then un buggered at huge expense and sold off to Brazil where she has continued to serve without real issues. I wish we still had her now but given the lack of Helo’s I guess it was for the best.
Couldn’t have been knackered that badly if a substantial refit has the ship service in operation today.
Exactly, more BS in name of cuts.
Cut a Helicopter Carrier and you no longer need so many Helicopters, Cut the Albions and you no longer require the crews or expensive equipment.
Ever decreasing circles.
She wasn’t terribly well built TBH having seen her close up. She never really complied with RN damage control so I was always mystified how she was ordered. She was a Max Hastings class carrier.
As others have said she had come up close to her hull life. And we know how well extending beyond hull life has gone for T23…..sure the refit will have got her back to a safe state so she could be sold with a straight face.
She will be very useful to them, fundamentally a ferry, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be on board in a shooting war.
Brazil kept Foch(?) the old French aircraft carrier operational until she more or less literally fell apart. That gives you a guide as to the operational materiel state they will accept in their fleet.
In WW2 there were CVE’s build from merchants that gave a very good service.
I do agree with you mostly but there is no denying that she had her uses and that we didn’t get a replacement.
Yet another capability gap like so many others.
“extending beyond hull life has gone for T23”
— would you have wanted to be on board T23 in a shooting war then?
Brazil kept Foch(?) the old French aircraft carrier operational until she more or less literally fell apart. That gives you a guide as to the operational materiel state they will accept in their fleet
— fallacy, made after considering just one or a few examples rather than relying on more extensive research to back up the claim.
Ocean had refit 2012-14 after London Olympics, while Illustrious covered, so did get some years out of her.
Recollection is Dauntless and Lancaster had a long period unavailable.
Half our energy comes from renewables, and half our oil comes from Norway. It’s hard to justify devoting so much of our navy to an area of rapidly decreasing strategic importance.
When it’s in short supply, the price of all oil goes up on the world market, whether it comes from Saudi Arabia or Norway. We tie our electricity market prices to the highest source used, so if the price of oil and gas goes up, even electricity from revewables goes up with it. That’s why when the war happened in Ukraine, the UK took to putting huge amounts of taxpayer’s money into subsidising the price of electricity; around £40bn a year, or as much as it puts into all UK conventional defence.
A lot of that can be blamed on the Germans shutting there nuclear power stations, there economy is going tits up and the lack of base load power has increased the price of electricity in all countries linked to Germany’s grid, including Norway. A couple of weeks ago when there was no wind in Northern Europe and no sun (its winter go figure) the price per mega watt of electricity almost topped 1000 EUR. .
Not so, not anywhere near correct. You refer to electricity generation and, even then, your statement is correct only if civil nuclear is categorised as renewable.
In 2023 the UK had an annual input of 1,666 TWh from
hydrocarbon fuels, including biomass and waste, plus a further 139 TWh of
primary electricity (wind, solar, nuclear and hydro). 373 TWh of the
hydrocarbon fuels are consumed in the generation of electricity and the total
electricity supplied, including from primary sources and imports, was 303 TWh
so the total energy consumed by users was 1,666 – 373 + 303 = 1,596 TWh of
which less than 20% is delivered as electricity and only about 20% comes from
low carbon sources.
Detailed figures can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes-2024
“1,666 TWh from
hydrocarbon fuels, including biomass and waste” Not sure why you would do that, I wasn’t aware they were considered fossil fuels or that we imported biomass and waste from the gulf.
The figure for oil imports comes from 2021 via the ONS.
The figure for energy use is projected for this year by National Grid, as I said the strategic significance is rapidly decreasing.
The UK own crude oil production is 34 mill tons in 2023.
Its a complex area as there is trans shipment and import and export of crude and refinery product.
Actual imports of crude exceed own production only by 12 mill tons and just as much imports in gross comes from US as Norway
The Crude Oil answer has to be seen in a different context of the UK crude oil production of 34 mill tons
“The UK imported 48.42 million tons of crude oil in 2023, while exporting 36.29 million tons, resulting in a trade deficit of 11.95 million tons. Norway was the main supplier of crude oil alongside US.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/381963/crude-oil-and-natural-gas-import-origin-countries-to-united-kingdom-uk/
Most of our shipped products still pass through that region..no getting around the western Indian Ocean is hugely important as a choke point.
Heard of the Panama Canal and its neo panamax vessel size 13000 to 16550 TEU now
So many choke points going through your way
1)Gibraltar
2)Suez
3)Bab El Mandab
4)Malacca
Indeed, but I would say this,
1) Gibraltar, is a UK controlled choke point in which we have a port, an airport and all our own infrastructure, that’s a choke point the UK essentially controls and cuts if needed.
2) Bab El Mandab is all part of the the same western Indian Ocean choke point and I was discussing, why we must both maintain forces in that region as well as keep allies and manage the influence of china in the region.
3) Suez, simply put if you piss off the Egyptians it’s cut, there is not anything militarily you can do about it, it’s all political.
4) Malacca, in reality if we are at peace with china it will remain open or if we are at war with china it will become a bloodbath, but it will be cut if the west goes go to war with china, simply because it will become a constant battleground. If we are at war with china the Malacca choke point becomes a bit mute, as the Far Eastern manufacturing, will stop anyway..nothing will be coming from the western pacific if there is a general U.S. China war.
5) Panama Canal, is quite frankly a U.S. issue, 40% of US shipping passes through, but very little European, keeping the Panama Canal open is a U.S. problem.
The western Indian Ocean choke point ( the Gulf, gulf of Aden, Red Sea, suez) is our problem as a huge amount of shipping from across the Indian Ocean region heads to Europe that way. In any conflict or sub conflict, with Iran, Russia or china , the European navy’s will need its regional allies and significant resources to keep that specific choke point open.
Thanks for that. But I was more thinking the choke points bring everything together in a narrow point rather than have shipping widely fanned out.
One versus 4 times over
Also mercator projection of the 3D globe vastly inflates northern hemisphere land masses on most maps
This is actual size for US, Canada, Greenland Scandinavia, Russia China etc
People’s Liberation Army Support Base in Djibouti
Thanks for that . Yes, Dijoubti is a bit crowded now as the French (it used to be known as French Somaliland) and the US is there too
Slightly off-topic but can’t help thinking CSG25 needs to be binned. It was originally designed to be a showcase for carrier strike, but is increasingly likely to be a national humiliation.
We haven’t got enough aircraft to provide a full complement (24) for the carriers and there’s no solid stores ship – it’s nice of Norway to loan Maude but in no way is she a suitable like-for-like replacement for Fort Vic.
Add in the state of the 23s, and now we find out 50 year old Argus may (or may not) put in an appearance for some reason.
Let’s just not bother, it isn’t going to end well.
CSG21 was a Covid ridden mess that culminated in losing the Lightning over the side in the Med on the way back. It should have been delayed a year or truncated in the Gulf once QE picked up Covid in Cyprus. .
Far from it. Thats the whole point of multi national major naval exercises- adversity is part of the challenge and how else are the operations to be tested and learnt from- a paper exercise at home ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Carrier_Strike_Group_21
A hasty generalization making sweeping statement without considering all of the facts and make conclusions based on unproven evidence
That would be the very thing not to do..it would be a massive failure to deter china.
A carrier with half an air group, inadequate logistics and wheezing escorts is supposed to deter the Chinese?
And what are we supposed to be deterring them from doing? Invading Hong Kong? I may have some bad news for you.
Invading Taiwan..because whatever you may think a 70,000 ton carrier that can carry 36 fifth generation fighters is a major deterrent….the U.S. will probably be able to react to any invasion with 4-5 carriers the fact the UK could send another one increases that force by 20%..which is a significant deterrent.
The T23 s actually still a very good ASW escort and the ones just out of refit are good for 6 years. The T45 is a profoundly good AAW destroyer and the SSN that will be with the group is probably the best the planet…that half an airwing will be 2 squadrons of the most effective fighter bomber on the planet as well…infact the only nation that could generate a more powerful naval air wing is the U.S..
Jonathan and RichardIC
I am going to disagree with Jonathan – however I will only half agree with RichardIC
The key issue here is that we now have a RN and MOD leadership which has only starting serving after 1989 = in peacetime (ie since the Berlin Wall fell). Their thoughts over the past three decades have been, and continue to be, all about waving the rainbow flag; counter-narcotics, counter-piracy etc etc. They are all really struggling to get their brains around what is happening in the world today. Furthermore, quite frankly, these days, most of the RN leadership are scared of their own shadows
It is their completely muddled thinking which has got us into this mess
That completely outdated mentality at the very top of the RN has to change…and it has to change fast
————
Iran quite-deliberately launched a war against the west on the 7th October 2023: when it quite deliberately provoked Israel by getting a key ally to masssacre and take hostage many innocent civilians.
In a long post here on Navy Lookout the following Saturday, the 14th October 2023 – so written at a time when there had been no Israeli retailation whatsoever – I accurately predicted that a big war would spread throughout the Middle East.
Word for word I said – ” like wildfire “
Since then, Iran and its allies have attacked almost every neighbouring country – even Pakistan – and severely hit Western merchant shipping.
By routing shipping via the Cape , that has added added vast costs to the shipping of everyday products sold here in the UK
That 7th Octber attack was primarily designed to split the moderate anti-Iranian muslim world countries – especially the Saudi’s – away from the West.
In the first fourteen months of this pan-regional war = Iran has completely suceeded in every one of their war aims
——————–
Last week, Iran suffered a very unexpected setback in Syria.
That “rebel” strike just goes to show what has happens when one hits an economically weak and very despotic regime “somewhere painful” .
That regime simply falls over = very quickly…..
———————
There is no point whatosever in sending CSG25 towards China for a bit of useless flag waving. There are enough heavily armed pro-western countries in the Far East region – especially USA, Japan and South Korea (and Taiwain itself), to contain the Chinese menace
Thus CVS 25 should be retasked: to do one the job in hand that needs doing by a naval carrier strike force.
(I pointed this out on the 14th October 2023)
CVS 25 should be sent towards Iran’s key choke point.
That is because, as I pointed out back in October 2023, a very few simple long-range F35 air strikes against Iran’s key economic and political infrastructure (esp IRGC) will very quickly bring down its much-hated regime from within – and simultaneously thus also bring down all of its regional allies = once and for all
Indeed, if we had any diplomatic skillsets left inside the FCO – the mere threat of severe strikes from CSG 25 would pacify – and thus reopen reopen – the Red Sea within a few days,
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Don’t hype us up. T23s are falling apart, T45s are constantly breaking down in one way or another, Support fleet is near collapse, Argus is having to cover for stores and we have a piddly number of aircraft
I’m not hyping up, the reality is the UK can still put together a carrier battle group of 2 modern AAW destroyers, many of which have now had the power issue fixed, 2 very capable ASW frigates, two of which are fresh out of refit and will not fall to bits for a good 6 years. As well the very best ASW focused SSN on the planet a modern 70,000 ton carrier and 2 squadrons of 5th generation fighters….it is what it is..far more impressive than anything other than 2 other navies can field. The issue with the RN is not can it put together a very powerful CBG as it clearly can, it’s that it cannot maintain all its global commitments or fight a very long peer war.
The issue is that we don’t, currently have the depth, to keep a CBG in theatre for a protracted period of time.
Although we could rotate the two QECs and we might soon be able to rotate the T45’s next year.
The T23’s are bit more of an issue and until T31/26 come along the escort supboard is look a bit bare to me.
The thing that gets me is the lack of urgency solving the RFA issue. I get the the civil servants are hand wringing about precedent [their favourite word] but if there isn’t a solution in few weeks so many people will have left the regenerating will be a slow and painful process. So deal with it now to save money and get some more big grey hull working for UK PLC.
Indeed. The RFA issue is a joke to be honest . Depth is the key issue.. the RN should have 9-10 AAW destroyers and 9-10 high end ASW frigates and 9-10 decent GP frigates. 2-3 fast replenishment vessels and 4-6 fast oilers and 9 SSNs , the RAF/FAA should have 4 front line F35b squadrons..But the lack of depth does not prevent the CBG from being effective as a lot of people claim.. there is a big difference between making a point as to what size navy we should have and the lack of depth and just saying everything is shite…as some are saying
Silly suggestion time.
Many MCMVs have been decommissioned – what has happened to the personnel released? Would it not be possible for themto take over Stirling Castle (making her a HMS) and get on with learning the skills required for the new generation of mine clearance tools.
100% agree with your all MCM related matters should be RN manned and the crews that once manned the MCMV’s must be around to man this and the other need vessels to allow the MCM kit to get to where is it is most needed and if given a few pop guns can give that presence too. The Rivers have been made to higher mil spec than those that we sold off to Brazil etc and could easily be up gunned with additional weapons already in service. The Old Castles had the space for such and Anti ship missiles which the newer Rivers could be fittec with as there are loads of choice to give them such.
The RN has not been well run for many years and the decline is a disgrace not only to those that serve but those that have gone before. Island Nation without a Navy worth talking about. Deterrence is not only the Nuclear but presence that has a real meaning. As we clearly see everyday with our shocking streets not being Policed, its the WOKE way of the UK.
Stirling Castle is just an experiment, not really good enough as we have seen.
MOD paid £20m to test the Pergrine drone on HMS Lancaster for two years and it only started flying at the end of this August. If this article is correct and Lancaster isn’t replaced next year, where will Peregrine continue to be tested? Will we see another problematic drone test cancellation?
I would build another 5 Rivers but with a decent defensive suit against drones and surface threats.
What does that fix
The very loss of hull numbers for one thing and a budget forward deployed credible force more capable than R2’s and a semi decent protector for the newly envisaged Mothership/MCM capability.
We lack numbers across all our areas of interest if you want my opinion.
The Rivers are constabulary vessels, and increasing their armament doesn’t change that.
We need warships, not constabulary vessels.
We need the sailors that we have to crew those warships.
We don’t have the money, or sailors for a River Batch 3 – evan assuming we have the spare shipbuilding capacity to build them.
I can’t disagree with you at all… I agree absolutely but we still have Appledore …. An up specked River would be a fine fit for the Bideford yard.
A 3000 ton R3 with some hefty upgrades to armament is certainly doable. Think Leander type spec but with a modern twist.
3,000t is 50% bigger than a B2 River. Thats not going to be an upgrade but a new class of ships. You’re not going to see something new developed, detail designed, built and put into service in less than 6 years. I suspect you’re also looking at more than £1B for a class of 5 ships at today’s prices. You’re also going to need 400+ at sea crew (plus potentially an air department) even if you only single crew them. I don’t think the RN has either the money or the manpower. You certainly couldn’t do this class and any form of T32 at close to the same time.
But that’s the thing though…. The B2’s were vastly over priced, we all know that….. a B3 would be also but just look at the cost of the T31/T26 and the potential costs of the unknown T32…. You are correct though.
The price of the B2 rivers is a complex issue. A large part of the often quoted price is the cost of keeping the BAe Clyde yards open waiting for the dispute over T26 costs to be resolved. Any western built 3,000t light frigate is going to cost over £200m each when you include weapons and an element for design and setting up production.
Damen have a class of light frigates (2.35k-2.96k full) like this example with Indonesia’s KRI
Looks to me like Damen has an entire family of semi-modular, small to medium sized surface combatants to offer. I’m surprised they didn’t try to get in on the Royal Australian Navy’s new frigate project (or maybe they did and we never heard about it). I haven’t looked closely at these vessels but they at least pass the eyeballs test and they are in the range that the Royal Navy really should be looking at if you ask me.
Then I’d involve Appledore in whatever way possible in getting the T31 and T26 ships delivered asap. Maybe building hull sections, or fitting out, or whatever.
The big issue is that the T23s are falling apart faster than we’re building their replacements.
Not sure there is much of a workforce left at Appledore. When it shut a lot of people either retired or moved away. H&W were slowly rebuilding, but like everything they tried to do the were hampered buy a lack of capital and allegedly poor management.
And is the main problem…
– people
Even if we wanted to start another build stream of warships it is close to impossible.
Even starting the Solid Stores ships at H&W would cause a shift in labour force dynamics as we have Barrow, BAE (surface) & Babcock all recruiting & running training and skills academies.
And I’m all for lots of training rather than poaching small numbers back and forth. So great to see mass industrial training to make stuff is a thing.
And as you say T23 are falling apart faster than we are commissioning anything. As we have commissioned precisely zero T31/26 so far. Nothing further than builders basin trials as far as I am aware.
That is more than worrying as I can’t actually see the T23 fleet overlapping with anything other than the first few T31 (if they ever float off – as it is constantly delayed) or T26 with is glacial pace.
Agreed. Skilled, experienced people are the biggest constraint on our shipbuilding capabilities. Would be great to see at least one more shipyard available but staffing it would be the biggest issue… and inevitably followed by ensuring a continuous order-book.
It seems British shipbuilding has yet to escape the boom-and-bust cycle, with it currently experiencing a boom which is so big, and so urgent, it can’t fulfil it.
In reality if you look at the T23s not one has gone more than 6 years beyond its lifex..essentially that means the last T23 is gone for 2030…it’s likely we will be down to 6 T23# for 2026 and have one left for 2030…essentially the RN surface combatant fleet has collapsed and if they dont get at least a couple of new frigates commissioned in 2028 the escort fleet may be down to 10. After 2030 the RN will have the first 3 Type 26s and hopefully the 5 T31s and 6 T45s at same time the Italian navy will have 12 FREMS and 10 new GP frigates, 2 13,000 AAW cruisers and 2 horizons..in 1999 the RN escort fleet was twice the size in numbers of the Italian fleet and over 3 times its. Mass..in 2030 the Italian fleet will be twice the size of the RN escort fleet and twice its mass.
Your post says it all. Italy is going about things the right way. The country has a robust shipbuilding capacity led by Fincantieri, which might be bigger than BAE by now if I’m not mistaken. But the real shocker is the last sentence. By 2030 the Marina Militare will have twice the numbers and twice the tonnage of the RN escort fleet? Really? What the h#ll happened to you guys, UK? Who is responsible for this, why aren’t they being held to account, and who is going to do something about it?
If we are talking about shipbuilding only, Fincantieri is several times bigger than BAE shipbuilding. Fincantieri is the only western shipbuilding company to appear in 10 first shipbuilding companies in the world.
Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne cruise ships were build by Fincantieri.
Note the construction times for Queen Anne a 322m , 103000 Gross Tonnage vessel.
Laid down 5 October 2022
Launched 24 April 2023
Completed 3 May 2023
Maiden voyage 3 May 2024
Their current order backlog is almost 45B$.
Their 3 big LNG powered Carnival cruise ships will be the biggest ships build in Italy. 230000 gross tonnes for more than 7000 passengers each.
Overall revenue if we join Fincantieri and Leonardo for 2023 is similar to BAE even if the comparison is imperfect since Fincantieri most shipbuilding revenue are civilian vessels: cruise ships and highly specialized vessels(Cable layers, oil prospection etc) and it does not include a military land element while BAE numbers include military land, but do not include civilian ships because it do not builds them.
Fincantieri 7.65B$
Leonardo 15.3 B$
BAE 23 B$
“ at same time the Italian navy will have 12 FREMS and 10 new GP frigates, 2 13,000 AAW cruisers and 2 horizons..”
You keep saying that every new NL story and none of its even remotely true
The top level of destroyers ( not cruisers) is just a continuation of the existing 4 ( 2 pairs) destroyers – de la Penne and Doria classes
They currently have 11 frigates and 8 SSK and that wont change much either plus some Med specific OPV types
The DDX will be quite bigger than De La Penne 5500t class they are replacing. If +10000t combatant is a cruiser then they will be cruisers.
Sidenote: I am not convinced by these ships unless they have an high end ABM capability.
In 30’s Italian Navy will have 4 DDG’s, 19 frigates(12 FREMM+7 PPA)+ eventually some EPC corvettes. All Aster 30 capable.
Med specific OPV types – compare a Comandanti Class with 76mm gun and hangar – with Rivers – have been operating in Guinea.
But the biggest point for me is that the new DDG’s, new frigates and the PPA will have dual band search radars in 360º fixed panels, specialised anti drone radars while RN will continue with one trick ponies plus T26 starts at sea with already legacy issues.
At least RN appears to have fixed their bias against guns.
The only thing I will add is they plan for 10 PPA 7 ordered with a last tranch of 3 more..that’s their documented assumption..and they will all be of the better equipped variants. So it will be 22 frigates.
I don’t think that 3 more PPA will be ordered , it is possible that is 2 of being build will be sold to Indonesia and 2 PPA EVO will be built.
Hi Alex, 2 PPA have been sold to Indonesia with contracts signed, but as always with the Italian model they are two ships already built that are working up or in final fit out, but they are essentially now contracted to go, as you said these are being replaced with 2 PPA evo models with a larger missiles fit, there is talk of 64 A50 and A70 launchers +8 deck launched strike missiles, 2 medium guns, 2 40mm cannons, light weight torps and a hanger..not sure how you get all that in a 5000 ton hull, especially with the decent high radar and sonar fit. The new evo contract is set to be signed early in 2025. There is no news out of Italy that they are not going to order the last 3 PPAs for a full 10. But we are unlikely to know 100% for a couple more years. The two new EVO PPAs will probably be launched for 2027 so you would likely see the last tranch of 3 ordered in 2026/2027 for delivery in launch in 2028/29 and commissioning in 2030/31
latest DDX is now looking like it will be north of 14,000 tons, due to the new verson of the Leonardo radar being a energy hogging very heavy beast.. so people can name it what they want but it’s a cruiser in reality even if they call it a heavy destroyer. It’s looking like the steel will be cut for these ships will now be in 2025, delivery to the navy 2030.
so I know we get the denying types who just will not see what the Italian navy has become but the really is at a min it’s likely in 2030 to have
2 13000-14,500 air defence cruisers with ABM aster 30 NT decent ASW fit
2 horzonn AAW destroy aster 30NT, with reasonable ASW fit
2 FREMM EVO quite hulls full ASW and extended air defence with ABM capability Aster 30 NT
4 ASW FREMM with fully quite hulls and extended air defence
6 GP FREMM with hull mounted sonar and extended air defence
2 EVO PPA with ASW tail, Extended air defence, ABM aster 30 NT.
4 full load PPA, extended AAW, Aster 30 NT, ASW and tail. Land attack
1 PPA light+ extended AAW, aster 30 NT, ASW arms tail.
that’s essentially what’s now full planned in and funded. That’s for 2030 essentially 23 modern high end escorts every one of which has good long range AAW capabilities and all of which have good to reasonable ASW capabilities. They are also still assuming they will order the 3 further PPAs.
At the same time in 2030/31 the RN will be Lucky if it’s got
6 AAW destroyers with Aster 30 block 1, but not the better NT
3-5 GP frigates with short range AAW and no ASW, land attack ( more likely 3 at present build as hull three is not going to be laid down to 2025j
3 ASW frigates with short range AAW, top end ASW and land attack
so in 2030 odds are
Italy will have 23-26 modern escorts that can all do ASW and all do long range air defence
RN will have 12-15 modern escorts only 6 of which can do long range air defence and only 3 of which will have any ASW capability.
not sure why people have such a hard time with the concept that Italy has the best and most efficient ship yards in Europe and because the are state owned The Italian navy gets very good escorts cheap as chips and each is generally build and commissioned with 4-5 years..and the UK has fucked up so dramatically and our shipyards take 9 years to build a ship that costs a lot more ( because time is money).
That is not the reason. The reason is that company works in world ultra competitive shipbuilding market*. If they were like a state owned company to make ship only for the state they would have been a failure because they would not have incentives to be efficient.
I put above Queen Anne 322m cruise ship example: laid down October 2022, completed 3 May 2023. That is 7 months.
They are in Milan stock exchange with all public disclosures about its finances that it entails and operate as a commercial company.
*it must be noted that shipbuilding is not an industry that gives that much money since prices have been crunched by Asian shipbuilders.
That is the main reason for UK disinvestment from that industry, there are more profitable things to do.
Hi Alex yes the Italian yards are very efficient and to be honest from from a western warship point of view probably the most efficient. So any nation ordering gets a good deal. But if you look at the contract values you will see that the Italian government tends to get a better deal than all the rest. Also they are state owned so any profit from the contract goes back to the government anyway.. so the government is getting tax return, profits returns on its own orders then the same on any foreign orders….that makes Italian navy warships a profoundly good deal for the state… and why it’s always selling and then replacing Italian navy ship options on the production runs.. not only does it get an industrial stimulus and tax take but it gets the profits from the sales… its win win win… if it was a private yard it would “only” get the industrial stimulus and tax take ( so only a win win ). Essentially you cannot remove the fact it’s state owned from the equation, as that turns a good situation ( well run efficient yards, with good industrial stimulus and tax take, ) into an amazing situation ( well run efficient yards in which all profits go to the treasury).
PPA or Thaon di Revel-class offshore patrol vessel isnt called a frigate
Pattugliatore Polivalente d’Altura means what ?
It’s irrelevant what it’s called the Italian naming is imprecise on purpose.. essentially it’s a multipurpose 5000-6000 ton surface combatant designed to replace frigates or patrol ships.. the Italian versions are frigates pure and simple all being the light + full or evo, these all have a very good long range radar, long range AAW, ASW fit, 2 medium guns.. the evo and full also have land attack… they are top end frigates in anyone’s navy,
PPA Plus: 127mm gun Vulcano capable, 76mm gun with anti missile guided rounds, gun all radar guided. 16 Aster (even the next B1 NT) , 8 SSM, hangar for 2 NH90(or NH90+drone) or 1 Merlin. torpedo launcher.
Dual band 3D multi-function active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar with four C- and X-dual band radars. 360º IRST for passive search, towed VDS sonar.
Nice OPV…
Italy calls it DDX !. Fantasy-war gaming fleets naming is just silly. Do you appoint yourself Ammiraglio for war games ?
For technology and accommodation reasons all warships are bigger than their predecessors.
Theres good reasons still to have rotating radars, just look at cube and that will show the corners have lesser coverage with lower power from the electronic sweep
Many commentators are calling it a cruiser. The Italians are describing it as a heavy AAW destroyer.. your getting very hung up on names and designations which are irrelevant.. numbers and capabilities matter… and the Italians will have 23 to 26 very good 5500ton to 14000ton major surface combatants for around 2030. I don’t really give to hoots if we call them destroyers, frigates, patrol
Ships , cruisers.. it’s the capabilities and numbers that matter.
“Theres good reasons still to have rotating radars, just look at cube and that will show the corners have lesser coverage with lower power from the electronic sweep”
Comrade , are you drinking too much MaoTai?
-can you prove lower power from the electronic sweep?
-why PLA Navy don’t have rotating radar?
Type 055
Ammiraglio Alex. Nice ring to it .)))
It is irrelevant what they are called what matters are the capabilities.
Indeed..the US managed to re designate ships from frigates to destroyer to cruiser..infact many of the Cold War US cruisers started life as frigates…designations are meaningless and change like the wind capability and numbers matter.
Yes it is it’s published..just look at the FREMM build schedule, it’s all open source data..8 FREMMs commissioned, 2 being commissioned in the coming year and 2 new orders for commissioning in 2030.
your missing the fact they also have another production line of frigates the tha on Di Revel Class..they are called patrol ships but the Italian navy will have the frigate version which has Aster 30, lane attack missiles and 2 medium guns..4 are active, with another 3 building and agreed funding for 3 more…the 2 new heavy AAW destroyers have agreed programme funding with a planned build time for 2030..that is all public access information and all completely true.
She was built to Warship standards and has a decent warfare system fitted. Within UK Air Defence Zone and a small towed array I would argue she has her uses.
Great panoramic photo.
OMG…. we now have a Sailor32, A Sailorboy and a Deep16……. Bring back Deep32, at least he was consistant.
None of the new ones are me, by the way.
I don’t know where they’ve come from, they seem to have been inspired by your comments.
I took miss Deep32, he was the main SME for submarine warfare.
My comments are normally only ignored… Any Inspiration comes from recognition of patterns….. Are you on FB ? (it’s an old site that was popular with younger people but now only frequented by the desperate attention seekers…. You can PM me there if you want…. Wyn Baynon is my preferred name).
This is not the place for politics but every week there are announcements of extra money for something or somewhere. Yesterday it was announced we’re giving £50m to the new ‘govt’ of Syria. That alone would solve the problem of recruitment and retention in the RFA with millions to spare. The money is there the will or desire is not.
Unfortunately we have to take a punt on this crew in Syria. they can’t rebuild without cash and if they can’t rebuild then you will just have an angry population and a continuation of the costly civil war that has destabilised the region for over a decade. Soft (Cash) Power, we have been using it for years.
I am afraid soft power really only works when the people you are trying to help actually want it and respect you for it. It sadly hasn’t helped in Iraq, Afghanistan or Yemen and I can’t see it helping in Syria. We have cultural and religious differences with those countries you cannot just ignore.
Unfortunately, our media will interview very well educated “westernised’ individuals who will talk eloquently about democracy, womens right and values etc in our terms but they will be a very small minority in a population that largely either rejects our way of life or who would like to destroy it. We need to accept our differences with them, fight to maintain our ways and let their fellow Arab neighbours help them.
“We have cultural and religious differences with those countries you cannot ignore”
We probably have more cultures and religions in this country than most others, they arrive by the boat load every day.
The problem with the RFA is they are part of the civil service with all the benefits that entails. The main benefit is a very good pension scheme, much better than any civil shipping line would give these days. The disadvantage is they are tied to the main civil service pay system. For years the old government tried to fight inflation by suppressing civil service wages. HMG is concerned that if they do a deal for the RFA that doesn’t take them out of the civil service it’ll face claims from health, eduction etc to reopen their pay settlement.
Sure but you give them ‘an afloat’ payment that has nothing to do with their base pay and pension and don’t make it pensionable….it isn’t that hard to solve if you want to solve it.
TBH the bung to the train drivers was just given to them….
Other civil servants, such as Border Force, etc, would probably demand that they qualify for an “afloat” payment…
But you’re right in principle, it’s not beyond the wit of man to come up with a scheme that allows an extra payment specifically for the RFA.
Border Farce don’t live aboard their vessels or sail into harms way or have to work with large volumes of HE and other things that go bang!
Personally I would pay the RFA navy rates…
Cameron and Osborne are why we’re in this mess but their successors of both parties are why we haven’t fixed it. The civil service overall has no problem with recruitment and retention. In fact the opposite. Why do HMG believe pay rises for junior doctors and train drivers will not lead to the same issues as a pay rise for the RFA ?
I really think that this mess is way more historical than Cam Moron and Ossie Oz bore’s…. It goes all the way back to @Владимир Темников 1908…. the rot hat set in before that but 1908 was the starting point if you look at historical stuff.
To fix those gremlins like the website inserting Cyrillic alphabet to replace your link and others from poor site security try deleting your site cookies and data and restarting web link
Sorry, new laptop, haven’t got around to setting it up properly yet.
I agree kind of agree re politics but with respect I think concerned people that inhabit these sites need to get more political otherwise there will be nothing left to talk about.
I have managed to spend a little time lobbying my new Labour MP about a couple of things one of which was the RFA situation.
Genuinely. Good luck.
If that £50m helps ensure that Russia vacates its airbase and naval base, and that China doesn’t acquire them, then it’ll have been a bargain.
In terms of HMG’s annual spending, £50m is small change found down the back of a sofa.
I agree about both.
And yet there are still more than 30 serving admirals and 70 commodores. Daddy, Daddy, what do those men (and now some women) actually do?
And most of them comment on here every day !
If only the real admirals were so available for public questioning and scrutiny…
The most valuable asset we could invest in would be kept simple but be medium large ships as world sea control cruisers say 15000t. Largely self supporting they would be in addition to our OPV’s.( something like the Bays but more fighty) Maybe a cross between the Bays and simplified FSS or T31’s.
Let’s see what T83 turns out to be. I see a tilt towards the larger more heavily armed and capable vessels just like the PLAN Type 055 and the new JMSDF BMD.
One thing we do very well is to design cutting edge ships that are ahead of the game, I just hope sufficient funds are available.
You have a good point…… The UK could certainly benefit from having a few of these…. as so many keep saying, Space and metal are cheap but 6 heavily armed BMD ships would certainly increase the capability of the RN especially with all the new threats. Having the space to be able to up arm and increase defensive capabilities would be well worth the money to my mind.
Christ knows where or when they would be built though given the current backlog and future export ambitions.
Give me 6 Twenty Thousand Ton BMD ships with a hefty weapons payload any day over a fleet of T45 Portsmouth harbour queens.
Time to work with Japan on these me thinks.
20,000 tons is a little too big IMO. You’re almost getting into USN “CSGN” (Strike Cruiser) concepts—very cool and honestly battlecruisers, but more ship than you need or can afford. I could see something in the 15,000 tons range, or even a ship that was closer to the now-retiring Ticonderoga air defense cruisers.
Actually more the opposite end of spectrum, like these 2950 ton full load Damen Sigma class frigates like Indonesia and Morocco have
Jiangdao-class corvette Type 56A corvette Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy
BAES must have consulted with the RN about their thinking re Type 83. The size of the new assembly hall on the Clyde is probably a good guide to the max size they expect.
You should focus in Baltic, North Sea, Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic in general.
There will be enough threats to go around when Russia and China both start pushing closer to your home waters.
Hmmmm, Russia is a spent force apart from a few credible (hardly) newer surface ships (tugs mostly) and a few Akula’s.
China is a completely different animal and so far a remote threat but given the rate of build up, only the foolish would dismiss their intent.
China’s biggest hurdle is overseas bases and logistics but they are very active and busy rectifying both.
If their plans in Africa go as they hope, they will have bases close enough that they can get into the Mediterranean, which has been a Franco-Italian-UK lake since WWII. But maybe not anymore.
Again this all keeps circling back to the elephant in the room. The UK simply can’t afford to find a properly sized military without a significant alteration to the structure of its post-WWII society as a whole. In plain American English, this means that the NHS, which is the monster that is consuming more and more of the national budget, must be drastically reformed and overhauled if not privatized altogether. Along with this, the government as a whole must be held accountable for gross waste, corruption, and inefficiency.
The party is over, and it’s been over for a long time now. Unfortunately most post-WWII westerners haven’t come to grips with it yet.
It needs to be only available to native born Brits and legit active immigrants. At present you can bring in an unfit Granddad and get him fixed up while he is on a 90 day stop over. I’d like to see the stats on that and a question asked in the house. It could be 10% of throughput IMHO.
NHS isnt free for visitors ( including Brits who live permanently elsewhere)
“People who live outside the EU, including former UK residents, are not automatically entitled to free NHS care. They should make sure they are covered by personal health or travel insurance so that they can recover from their insurer any treatment costs that they are required to pay. They will be charged at 150% of the NHS national tariff, unless an exemption applies to them or the service they are accessing, or they are covered by a reciprocal healthcare agreement between the UK and their country…
Doesnt apply to GP and A&E care …charges that is
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-the-nhs-charges-overseas-visitors-for-nhs-hospital-care/how-the-nhs-charges-overseas-visitors-for-nhs-hospital-care
So . no the NHS budget cant be cut 10% for increase in defence budget . And yes “grandads family will have to pay”
It’s a bit nuanced urgent and emergency care are available to anyone. Management of chronic care, long term conditions and planned care is only available if you are a UK resident.
But is a bit blurry, because management of longterm conditions and chronic care offer tip into acute exacerbation and becomes urgent or emergency care which is free to everyone..
so say you had heart failure and were visiting, if you ran out of diuretics, you would be able to get a free GP appointment and get a prescription ( which you would pay for). If you then tipped into congestive heart failure exacerbation you would get a free trip to ED, emergency care and then a get charged for any ward visit until your stabilised and discharged.
But what I will say is I’ve never known any NHS trust bother to try and recover costs..( you may have cases for very expensive care) it’s simply not economically viable to do so..first how do we find out your not entitled to free care as there is no database of who is entitled and who is not..also as almost everyone is entitled to care it’s not economic to set up systems to collect payments..as they will almost never be used,
What you will not get is any elective care or planned care.
That should read “can’t afford to FIELD”, sorry.
And why would Russia be a threat? Putin has no desire to invade or destroy Europe… homegrown politicians are doing that themselves
The people of Ukraine will tell you that Putin has already invaded Europe, so he clearly has the desire for it.
The people of Ukraine will tell you the new Polish republic invaded them in 1920 – and grabbed their territory until 1939.
Was that the real start of WW2 ?
Polish 2nd republic in league with Hitler and Hungary helped dismember Czechoslovakia in 1939 too. Hitler had a surprise for his then new besties.
The the new young belgian king Leopold III also was one for a Friendship Pact with Hitler after Begium abrogated their alliance with France
All irrelevant, as per usual from you.
Sean, you sound so much like the Whale Island Zookeeper, it’s uncanny, where is he, he’s normally all over this site and acting just the same way as you ?
Funny how he goes missing and you seem to slot right in hmmmm.
No, those two hate each other.
I wouldn’t have brought him up…
Relate to the current or future Royal Navy. (We are not a naval history site)
Russia is all about asymmetrical against NATO going forward.
They will focus on submarines, multirole frigates and corvettes and drone/missile equipped auxiliaries designed for offensive mining, commerce raiding and seabed warfare.
Bastions will remain but new major surface units to guard them are unlikely to get priority.
They have Yasens with the Akulas and those are a real threat in the Atlantic.
The future multirole Laika class concept reveals their thinking, I would be very worried that in preparation to the Laika they will convert the upgraded Oscars for an ASBM role.
The auxiliary threat alone will tie up so much resources that convoys are the only realistic option during war time.
China will likely try to get at least a submarine base and an airbase from Russia to get direct access to the Arctic Ocean.
But their likely main Atlantic base will be somewhere just outside NATO boundary, West Africa is a good bet.
Ment the Delta for ASBM role, Oscars will end their career carrying Kalibr.
I think the Russian economy will have a huge impact on it’s ambitions not to mention it’s people.
A Chinese base in West Africa is more than likely as is a stronger hunger for bases in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
No danger of a PLAN Navel base in the Chagos Islands but I wouldn’t bet against them increasing influence there.
To my mind China’s next step will be overseas bases, it’s the one glaring hole in their strategy.
Trump will scupper Starmer the Harmer’s deal for the Chagos. It is lunacy as intended, as it gives away control of the perimeter islands and reefs..
Djibouti on Red Sea is already a Chinese base on the other side of the city to the US and French ones
Cambodia has the Ream naval base upgraded for China
Burma offshore island is another
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/01/military-construction-on-myanmars-great-coco-island-prompts-fears-of-chinese-involvement
Sri Lanka and its hardly used Chinese built container port has potential to become a ‘facility’
Already in S Africa and they could easily take Walvis Bay.
If we think the Russians are a threat we need to build SSK’s which would be the best defence against local threats at sea, which is what the ROC are starting to do more of.
Nah… SSK’s are not needed. More SSN’s are the answer here…. The Russians would never dare put to sea their archaic noisy death traps given enough Astutes.
Look at their position now …. no access to or from the Black Sea…. no real chance getting through the Baltic, no chance of operating in the eastern Med …. The far north frozen much of the year and the very far east really well covered by the USN and JNSDF…….. Russia only really has the N option.
China is the real threat…. and all we have to do is stop buying all their crap….. Simple really but so hard to do.
SSK’s have certain advantages over SSN’s, which continue to get bigger and bigger. The Astutes are very beefy “boats” and the successor SSN-AUKUS class will be larger still. This is hardly ideal for patrolling and fighting in the North Sea, Mediterranean, and littoral waters.
I have long thought that a class of modern SSK’s made all the sense in the world for the Royal Navy. This does not have to be anything extravagant. Ideally 8, but even 6 would probably do everything you would need them to do. In a perfect world, I would reconstitute a “Home Flotilla” comprised of the SSK’s and half a dozen updated Black Swan sloops. These would concentrate on Home Waters, GIUK, and occasional Gibraltar – Mediterranean deployments. Meanwhile the RN’s “apex predators”—the true blue water fleet—would specialize in power projection and larger operations. In practice these two elements of the RN would of course cross pollinate and operate with each other from time to time, but their primary taskings would be different.
Just my two cents.
The point is the Astutes, the T26s, and P8s prevent any Russian subs getting through the GIUK gap. Which means zero Russian subs in the North Sea.
XLUAVs will be used anywhere that’s unsuitable for SSNs.
XLUAV’s have a long way to go before they are operational and reliable.
Yes, but still faster to service and cheaper then the U.K. trying to introduce a fleet of SSKs after not building any for decades.
Which is the irony of Westminster policy – China bad, going to cause us trouble versus we buy everything from China including many of our ‘green’ energy requirements and politicians and royalty being in bed with Chinese spies…
Absolute nonsense
Sock puppet from Dukedom
How come you have the same handle thumbnail image as CR1?
Net Zero plays right into their hands as they own rate earth metals and now swathes of other mining enterprises.
One concerned American’s plan to stop the bleeding out of the Royal Navy:
* Authorize an emergency build, crash program for five (5) Batch II Type 31 frigates. Forget the T32 and just build more 31s. These are “credible frigates” at a much better price point than the T26 and meanwhile you save time and money versus a clean sheet design for the 32.
* Bring back the “Black Swan Sloop of War” concept, give it a fast update, and put 12 in the water yesterday.
* Bring all ordnance and fuel stocks up to full strength
* Bring pay for RFA sailors up to snuff.
* Worry about the rest later. Done.
Ermmm, I would like to know what you actually think you know about the as yet mythical T32 and it’s as yet to be defined specs ????
Apart from that, I can’t pick anymore faults…. Maybe when the hysterical Tax payer appears again, we might just find out some more.
What I think I know about the T32 comes from public sources that all contain much speculation. Apparently there is vague talk about it being a mothership for mine warfare UUVs. Some have suggested it could be an interation of the T31—which makes much more sense to my mind—but this seems to be the minority position.
That’s about it, honestly.
Well, That’s fair…. I see you have an honest and balanced view which is rather refreshing on here…. I do like that when talking to fellow members on a site that encourages opinions and views….. Personally I can only see up to the point of where the official stance on T32 actually is….. “A platform for autonomous vehicles” …. and that’s it… That’s all we are fed…. All of those who are banging about with their T31 B2 stuff are way off the mark and just flapping around in self induced fantasy thoughts….. Personally, I can’t see a T32 ever happening as it was either a Boris Error or a Starmer non starter….
Thanks, yes, always good to have honest dialogue.
Again keeping in mind that this is coming from a Yank—albeit one with UK great grandparents—it seems to me that the situation is now beyond critical. The numbers of RN combatants are now SO low that your national security is endangered. Certainly your basic foreign policy objectives, as I understand them, are imperiled and increasingly unrealistic.
Therefore, the name of the game is numbers, numbers, numbers, and doing so in a way that is at least quasi-affordable. So alright, the T26 was already cut back from 13 to 8 in favor of the 5 T31’s. Why not keep going with the 31 and leverage economies of scale? Beyond that, the only other credible surface warfare design or proposal of which I am aware that could realistically be built quickly and halfway cheaply is the Black Swan. As I recall, this was to be around 3,000 tons displacement with a minimal armament of a 30mm autocannon and a few SSM’s.
Given that the Royal Australian Navy used to mount VLS systems that were as small as eight (8) cells—obviously fewer than ideal but much better than nothing—if I were the MOD I would be on the red line to the RAN immediately and get the technical specs on that. So my updated Black Swan would be about the same size as originally proposed, but with an RAN-style small VLS for SAMs. I would replace the 30mm with the American rapid fire 57mm autocannon (currently slated for the Constellation class frigates and in service aboard our big Coast Guard cutters), and add in a small battery of SSM’s. Ideally 8 but realistically 4 of the new NSM’s rather than some other weapon, which helps with standardizing your fleet logistics. Add in some MANPADs and heavy machine guns or miniguns, and possibly a pair of stabilized remote operated light artillery pieces for use against swarm attacks, and there ya go.
Assuming that these hypothetical light frigates / heavy corvettes / “sloops” would be general purpose warships, they could also fill in as minesweepers, or perhaps a subclass or variant could be built “for but not with” minehunting equipment. Say, 4 of the 12. Or, hope against hope, 4 more could be built beyond the original 12. But let’s say 4 of the 12.
Now, even this ship is far from ideal, but it would have enough teeth to be a credible patrol vessel, and enough so that it was not a liability in wartime. Again there is much work to be done beyond this, but I am talking about emergency field medicine triage. Restoring the RN and the UK military in general to what ought to be its rightful place in the world is a generational task.
But this is what I would do to reverse the decline and restore a reasonable “floor”. The “ceiling” is for another time.
Will… you sound just like an Irate Tax Payer mate….
Georgie
Will is definitely not the Irate Taxpayer
Stop dreaming up wild and misplced conspiracy theories……
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Ah but that’s the problem, I don’t believe anything that anyone says on here.
Way too many multiple accounts and that is not a dream, that is a fact.
All great entertainment though.
Georgie
I am definitely not Will!
If you start dreaming up any more wild, way out and wacky conspiracy theories…..next week you will be stating, here on Navy Lookout, that:
“Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot JFK in Dealy Plaza!
It is quite unbelieveable what you have come out with recently…
Peter (Irate Txapayer)
HA ! I got you sussed…. Proper good it seems…. Those who protest so convincingly are mostly the guiltiest …… Your multi account presence here is terribly obvious and no matter how you try to dismiss me, you will never be anything other than a player. Trust me my cyber friend, You are so transparent….. Entertaining though but no expert.
love you !
Please call me Will
I thought you were D. B. Cooper? Loved your book by the way.
You blew my cover
Heh!
The Irate Taxpayer has far more specific knowledge of the UK and its internal machinery than I do. Probably because he’s a British national and I’m an American. But sure, other than that minor difference, we’re completely the same person. Brothers from another mother as it were.
Will
Don’t lets forget the really big difference between you and me!
So I can multi-task!
————————-
I have always felt that the USA greatest ever achievement was to put a dozen men on the moon using nothing more complex than the really old fashioned “feet and inches and pounds”.
Quite incredible!
Hats off – and lots of respect!
———————–
However Georgie probably belives that it was quite impossible for NASA to have completed “one gaint leap for mankind” project without using metric measurements……
……especially as Mr Von Braun (of V2 fame) was orginally European in origin (note 1)…… and so he orginally used metric
……so Georgie clearly belives that Neil A and Buzz A were on a film set – one built by NASA deep inside Nevada’s Area 51
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note 1. I can’t be using nasty words like “Nazi” on Navy Lookout! I might upset the editor and/or Santa Claus and/or the tooth fairey
Haha…caught you out
“The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) used SI units for the most critical calculations, such as the descent to the moon’s surface and the ascent stage’s return to lunar orbit. However, the display readouts were in units of feet, feet per second, and nautical miles, which were more familiar to the astronauts”
of course they used computers back then – they would be whole floors of buildings- and SI was the best way to do those. Nothing to do with Von Braun- an executive engineer by then who managed programs
Back in same time period RCNC still would have used imperial units for ship design as computers for ship design ( and the numerical theory that could be used for detailed design was new too) just started in mid 60s and the RCNC used scaling a lot based on previous design and used complex formulae, also historical, which required elaborate mechanical calculators to give results.
You started with Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), why don’t you Google for us and explain what China’s Chang’e 6 uses?
I can’t add anything to latest your epic rant, Peter, except….respect! 😀
They dont use imperial in US , its called USC or US customary and never really modified after 1830 like imperial was. NASA used SI
Duker
Simply not true – see below
Apollo was almost all designed, and built, using US engineering units of measurement (afew bits of SI/ metric were used, like AGS)
Apollo computers: When IBM engineers gave rockets a brain | Astronomy.com
Why did NASA use U.S customary units? – Space Exploration Stack Exchange
And, finally, I will not now wish you a Merry Chrsimas and a Happy New = because you celebrate the festival of the Chinese New Year.
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
You dont read your own links, which just repeat what I found
“The Apollo Guidance Computer did use metric/SI units internally for its calculations” The displays only were USC
You have confused me with someone else about China, YOU know more about the PLAN than me, but I do comment occasionally about the PLA-AF and how their new planes are rip offs and modified versions of older Russian stuff, including Mig that was prototype only- this is why I get targeted by the United Work Front of the central committees patriotic dupes in the west
This JF-17 fighter is merely the superficially modified J-7 or Mig 21 ( Grumman did the nose job)
Mr General Secretary, maybe you get targeted because you do not know the difference between CAC JF-17 and Guizhou JL-9
Chengdu Aerospace Corporation will feel insulted by you saying Grumman did the nose job on the CAC JF-17
They are all state owned aerospace entities. Thats how their system works
Yours is a two seater advanced trainer of the one seater JF-17 design . Just like the original Mi 21 had one
Whats this ‘face’ you talk about , its a foreign concept to me
But the nose job is true
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/this-is-the-ultimate-mig-21-715bb9297261
There is a huge and crippling fault with your plan. It doesn’t in any way address the RN’s long term problems with recruitment and retention, particularly of people with high marketable skills.
Until it’s shown the people problem has been fixed any large increase in ships is pointless.
Many people want a job where they are doing something useful, where they are appreciated, that has a future, and that pays enough to bring up a family. It’s not rocket science. Instead, the Forces are under-appreciated, ignored by those in power (except one morning a year), and you never know if the next government will institute another round of job cuts.
There’s a national shortage of skills in some of the engineering professions, where we have to teach more people instead of fighting over those trained by others.
Those are real issues which we should fix. We could do worse than to encourage hard work and stamina in young people. Rewarding those is a good start.
The Black Swan concept has evolved into T31 and T26 now.
The whole PODS idea and modularisation with unmanned mine hunting, autonomous RIBs and things was exactly what the Black Swan paper advocated.
The only flaw was that the concept ships had very little means of defending themselves against enemy attacks, because it was invented before the Houthis, Ukraine or China’s warship proliferation.
That’s why the best thing T32 could be is an evolution of T31, optimised to carry boats, unmanned submarines and drones.
You would retain the defensive armament from the base T31, but include much more space for off board systems and PODS.
For the best representation of this idea, try to find the article on this website on T32. I can’t remember what it’s called, but was from a couple of years ago.
Just how many different names do you post under ?
I’ll take my hat off to you though.
I understand that some features of the original Black Swan proposal have since migrated over to other ships; the same thing happened in the USN with the 1970s DARPA “strike cruiser” design, where most of its weapons and sensors ended up on the much smaller Ticonderoga cruisers.
However the T31 is nearly twice the displacement of the Black Swan and is in general a much larger and longer vessel. Thus I still say there is merit in an updated variant of the original Black Swan concept. So it’s either that, or forget about any kind of meaningful expansion of the Royal Navy beyond the hoped-for 24 escorts—and even that is only going to happen if the T32 is built OR (much more within the realm of possibility) you just add another batch of five T31s.
I really, really hate to see this happen to you chaps, I truly do.
Will
I totally agree
Overall the best way – and quite possibly now the only way – for the RN to get itself quickly out of the very big hole it has dug itself into over the past two decades (ie its lack of escorts) is to build more T26 and more T31
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Hmm…
Not so much a problem with “updating” the design because the concept was so basic, specified no systems whatsoever.
The issue is more about getting the idea into an actual, feasible warship hull.
Black Swan, IIRC, was the reductio ad absurdum of what the paper authors thought needed to happen to the Navy. The concept design was barely bigger than a River 2 and a tiny crew complement was suggested. In short, it wasn’t really a fighting ship and in a world of anti ship ballistic missiles and Shahed, having some drones slightly closer to the enemy isn’t going to save you.
Even the MRSS programme (replacement for the Bay class!) is seriously considering CAMM missiles as the minimum for independent operations.
Otherwise you end up like the LCS programme, where they have to operate under the umbrella of an Raleigh Burke destroyer allocated to follow the ships around. Similarly, relying on modules for all of your capabilities ends up like the LCS, with long conversion times and limited utility.
That’s why I think a frigate sized T32 is needed. Not only to have lots of space for the modules themselves and the off board systems, but to produce a capable warship at all.
Damen , the dutch warship designer and builder, have a Sigma class of light frigates ( some in service for others) just up to the 3000 t disp. level
I think a warship similar to the Israeli Saar 6 heavy corvettes would work, too, though probably with a bigger “Atlantic” bow and fewer SSM batteries to reduce topweight.
I suggest a small VLS battery, perhaps as few as eight (8) cells, to address some of the concerns you mention here. Otherwise I would fit the USN’s 57mm autocannon and a Phalanx mount to go along with MANPADs and GPMGs for the crew. I think you could squeeze a four canister SSM battery onto a ship like this, as well, particularly the slightly smaller (compared with Harpoon) Naval Strike Missile. Perhaps a mine hunting variant would not include SSMs but would have the other weapons. Just sketching here.
I think you misunderstand me, the ideal design is simply a modification of the T31, along the lines of the Babcock Multirole Naval Platform as can be found on this site.
That converts the central VLS space into a T26 style mission bay, replacing the forwards 40mm with 16 mk41 VLS cells (length unclear).
Then the space under the flight deck is converted into a mission space with a large stern ramp for launching and room for a containerised towed array.
That’s a lot of large boats and UUVs you can carry, on an existing hull.
It isn’t quite the Black Swan concept, but as I explained above that is very flawed and based on thinking from the LCS era.
I still think the T31s are a whole lot of ship (and really too much) for the minehunting role, but honestly and at this point, I would gladly take as many 31s as you can possibly get and figure the rest out later. The RN is way, WAY too small. Catastrophically so. This must either be addressed immediately or UK national security and foreign policy are both seriously imperiled for the foreseeable future. Yes, the situation is that dire.
Most of this decline is the loss of mine hunters many of which were in good enough condition to pass on to other countries. I don’t understand why we got rid of them before their replacements were available. Acquiring an oil support vessel as a mothership seemed a good move but seems to have proved less than satisfactory. So what is the plan for motherships ? Nothing definite has been announced beyond a wish for 3 new build vessels.
Proteus and Stirling Castle have proved to be pretty useless so far truth be known. We have virtually gone backwards whilst trying to prove a new concept and all the while decimating our MCM capability.
Normally it takes MOD years to get a ship purchased, built and operational. Everything is done really slowly. Even HMS Forth, the first of the B2 Rivers bought out of emergency desperation, took the best part of five years from contract to operations. During the five years, things were brought together to ensure that it would be successful.
Proteus was purchased less than two years ago, remarkably quickly, and all the things around it that are needed to make it work were not ready for it. From budgets to maintenance slots, ROVs to UUVs, these all had to accrete around it, and the RFA situation certainly hasn’t helped. It’s still too soon to judge if it will be a useful ship.
eu defence force here the UK comes…
It’s all by design, a run down of our armed forces to ensure they form certain components of the EU defence force.. look at what current Ru members can supply to support a carrier deployment (including auxiliaries). My view grows stronger as Starmer moves us ever closer to Brussels
NATO isnt EU. that so called EU military is just France trying to be top ‘rooster’
Only Austria and Ireland are in EU but not Nato now. Flyspecks !
Napoleon
This is not a chat forum, look into the mirror.
yes
watch the coming months…
Read the comments moderation policy, brain fart!
Do not use language that is offensive
https://www.navylookout.com/comment-moderation-policy/
One of the few things this administration has got right is to prioritise NATO above EU defence structures. So much for your conspiracy theory.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/uk-to-prioritise-nato-over-eu-defence-initiatives/
There you go again with your witches brew of falsehoods. There is no conspiracy by France just their stated aim
Read it and Ill do the laughing at your discomfiture
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy/security-disarmament-and-non-proliferation/european-defence-63008/
\
Lol, as now its only Austria and Ireland outside Nato Good luck with any military forces from them unless its IRA ?
“Witches brew of falsehoods”… this coming from a flat-earther is a complement.
NOTHING in the link you posted proves “CR1”s conspiracy theory about HMG running down U.K. defence so that it has to be in part of an EU military.
France’s position about defence, the dominance of the USA in NATO etc, has been known and pretty consistent since WW2. It’s why they left NATO, it’s why they have pushed for an EU Army. If they want to do that, fine.
Or haven’t you yet got it into your fat head that we aren’t in the EU?
So much anger.
Confused and incoherent much ?
French stated “European” aim is just being the rulers of European resources and other states doing her biding.
Duker
Your very poor understanding of European geography has, once again, reared its head.
Neither Austria nor Switzeralnd, nor a few of the smaller Balkan states, are members of Nato
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
That was my point ! My words were Austria and Ireland are outside Nato. Thats the meaning of outside, not members of Nato
this ‘administration’ has form for lying… however, read between the lines of what Pollard says and you’ll see my expectations will be correct.
France is very open about its aims
“French President Emmanuel Macron took a major step toward his grand plan of a European military intervention force.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/macron-eu-to-unveil-military-pact-projects/
Your claims are just a …blanc mange
Have you read the comment guidelines at all ?
The golden rule is no personal attacks.
This is not a chat forum
By “read between the lines” you mean “misinterpret and misrepresent what he says into whatever I want it to mean”?
Their aim is to row back on Global Britain and a Blue Water Navy. Always was always will be, its how Labour thinks and wishes things to be, except G. Brown and his Carriers screwed it up for their reparations mainstream crowd.
By midsummer we’ll find out. I hope I’m wrong.
Thats not so. Indeed its a complete invention of yours. In 2010 ,before change of government, GDP on defence was higher than this year at change of government. The Carrier and Astutes were under build and the last of the T45 were completing. The T23 replacement frigate development had been funded so would be soon ordered.
Then the massive cuts after the election and its SDR . The submarines and carriers construction were slowed… for the Astutes it became a crawl with ramifications till today. The refits were also slowed right down. The T23 replacement development was kicked to the long grass- finding cheaper options- until the next election 5 yrs later
Just look at the recent T23 NSM decision process– a mad hatters tea party is a better description
2019 election year announcement of announcement to consider an ASM replacement for harpoon
Aug 21 short list announced
Nov 21 dropping requirement completely
Jul 22 reinstate the requirement
Nov 23 Purchase announced of the only realistic option NSM
Asking for a friend, which Rip Van Winkel tree have you been asleep under for last 14 years
I nearly fell off the chair at the number of escorts in 1980!
What a tale of woe that is for the Navy, I hope the king gives Starmer what for about the state of affairs, I cannot imagine he is very happy about it.
Brittania ruled the waves, now more are laid up than operational. Shameful really, especially as by 2030 a hot war might be going on….
Its been 14 years of Tory misrule for the Navy. The GDP spent on defence they left with was lower than they started in 2010. You cant magic a run down system after only 6 mths. But maybe in Chipping Norton they believe such fantasys but not in my duchy
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“You can’t magic a run down system after only 6 months”
This bunch have done a remarkable job of running everything down in 6 months, God only knows how much more damage they will inflict before the inevitable vote of no confidence.
Given their majority how exactly do you see that happening?
Stay tuned…. and mark my words.
Sure sure, if the Tories managed to hold on for as long as they did despite their epic infighting and collapse I give Labour at least one full term.
The UK is no longer relevant east of Gibraltar, why the RN or any arm of the British military needs bases anywhere outside of the UK or it’s dependencies is beyond me.
Is this a Cricket sour grapes thing ?
Its to look after people like caught and bowled at silly mid off or between a rock and a hard place.
why sending a carrier group to pacific and not be bale to defend / support at one of the key choke points on the journey? RN is in real trouble, strategic purpose is not at all clear and thus capabilities a limited mixed bag. SDR is about money and nothing else. We are falling down the league quite quickly now and we still seem to have numerous admirals and officers but no crews.
Other than the USN, name me another Country that can send a CSG to the other side of the World and still have full capability to carry out all other commitments ?
If you think the UK can do that you are utterly deluded.
We can send one carrier and a supporting group all the way to the other side of the globe and still retain the capability to protect all other areas of interest. The delusional one is you.
CSG takes a fraction of our capability leaving ample assets to do their job in all other Theatres. Including another 65,000 ton Carrier and all manner of other assets.
You spout nonsense most of the time, I remember your stupidness over Putin’s threat to invade Ukraine and I’m not the only one who remembers your arrogant responses.
“Go away”
Are you the same Jim from the other site ? I love and deride your comments in equal measure…. This Zoo bloke on here is a whole new level of stupid most of the time.
Lot’s of Issues and apparently has more than a few accounts here.
Who are you please ? There are lots of commentators who post on both sites, I don’t recognise you.
When our CSG is in the Far East what aircraft would you put on the 2nd carrier and what BMD defence will the U.K. mainland have with two active type 45s in the pacific ?
With currently only 5 SSNs and one attached to the CSG hopefully we will have another available to protect the Bomber along with Merlins and another ASW capable Type 23.
I am no longer convinced to be honest and despite petty point scoring by some on here I think we all know we are at the tipping point and if SDR is another cutting exercise dressed up as review run by the Treasury then we are in serious trouble.
I have no political allegiances but I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the new Government on many counts and not just defence are no better than the previous incompetents.
Just a thought, perhaps some UK GBAD could be put in place utilising the type 45 on Portsdown Hill, surely a wide number of potential canister launched Missiles are compatible with the system some without any modification at all.
We’ve talked about it before, on here and UKDJ.
The site is owned by BAE rather than the MoD, so would need to be bought first. There would probably also be issues with hot launched Aster 30 near the historic forts on Portadown, and issues siting the missile silos away from the road.
There is also an Artisan setup further along the hill, so the site is doing useful development work at the moment.
Would be much quicker than setting up from scratch though in a TTW scenario, I also note that there is a substantial green area around the fort and canister launchers are normally distributed in a wide area. Hot launch safe area around launch units is a know issue and is partly why launchers are widely spaced as well as for resilience in combat.
Britain as a nuclear power is very unlikely to be hit by BMDs….. This is incidentally why our Nuclear Deterrent combined with our ambiguous usage doctrine provides great value.
How came France has the Army land based Aster 30 BMD, which they are upgrading right now ?
It also functions as ‘patriot equivalent’ long range and high altitude air defence system. UK army has neither Patriot nor Aster, but the RN uses Aster
https://www.army-technology.com/projects/aster-30/?cf-view
I would caution against thinking that having nukes will prevent Russian and Chinese conventional missile attacks.
Very unlikely that the past or suggested missile treaties will be continued or signed by them without rolling over for their demands.
Massed missile and drone attacks against industry and infrastructure are the new normal in a conventional war.
Nuclear first strike is very high up the ladder if both sides have a second strike capability.
Why do you think that we can still retain the capability to protect other areas of interests? As this article states, the number of ships in the Gulf has dropped from six to two and might drop even further next year. The attempt to maintain a presence against the Houthis in the Red Sea was abandoned. For the first year in a long time, only an OPV was available during the hurricane season in the Caribbean, and to make a “gunboat” point to Venezuela. The most active submarine in the Navy recently has reportedly been HMS Triumph, and that is now no longer available. We send fewer ships to longstanding exercises with allies, sometimes sending no ships or some token P2000s. Given the shrinking number of frigates, I question our ability in 2026 to do anything beyond TAPS and maintaining a Fleet Ready Escort. I really hope we’ll be accepting a couple of new frigates by the end of that year and can start to see the turning of the tide in 2027/28.
Notice that I haven’t even mentioned next year’s carrier strike group so far, although that will have had an indirect effect, skewing maintenance schedules to ensure the highest possible ship availability next year.
If we can’t maintain capability to protect our areas of interests in a year where there has been no major carrier deployment, there’s no magic available to suggest we’ll be able to do so in a year where there is, other than increasing our ability to distract ourselves so we don’t notice it. Don’t look over here, look at the pretty carrier instead. I’m pro-carrier, but I don’t kid myself about the parlous state of the rest of the fleet.
I was actually extracting the urine !!!! Truth is we are in a World of crap either way you look at things…. This Labour bunch are already doing extreme damage and causing untold suffering to so many. Nothing they promised in their manifesto has turned out to be true, Inflation up, Interest rates held, spending/borrowing up, growth down, Car industry in a dire state, Royal Mail sold abroad, EV cars in free fall, Water bills going through the roof, Pensioners freezing, Farmers pissed off enough to pack it in, record numbers of male immigrants of fighting age getting housed, clothed, fed and given heating…H&W sold to Spain, Chagos gifted to China (eventually) 13 RN and RFA ships withdrawn, 20 helicopters retired, nothing even remotely mentioned about T32, More F35, T83 or how we intend to keep sea lanes free of mines, a rumoured 20,000 military personnel cut, Not a hope in hell of building 1.5 million new houses and a economy that is crashing faster than in Liz Truss’s brief tenure.
Chagos Is agreement – started in Liz Truss era- requires that Mauritius negotiate a long term lease with the USN for their ‘facility’
BBC
The RN/USN/RAN new port of call/maintenance base – not facility- is HMAS Stirling not far from Perth Australia
no lease, no chagos
Just read this, You reference Liz Truss as if she was some sort of guiding light for the Labour misfits. Figures.
The International Court decided against Britain , and believing in the international rule of law the Foreign office during Truss’s time as PM began the negotiations.
So you dont think Britain is bound by international laws and rules ?
Dont play the Britain wasnt represented at the Court card as even in UK someone can be tried ‘in absentia’
I was being Ironic.
Sorry, Sometimes I can be a bit tone-deaf online
I think maybe we could…. but after we had done so we wouldn’t be able to do anything for a year! We have incredible breadth (or at least did until the BS Albion/Bulwark decision) but lack depth…
When will the RN learn ? Maritime Autonomous Systems are not the answer to lack of hulls and sailors. !! Agree with your reporter in that MAS is not a panacea and as we previously predicted, the RN found that “recovery and launching and sense of packages from USVs is exceptionally complex, especially in the interaction between the platform, the sea and seabed”. MAS will always struggle in complex Electromagnetic Environments and lack of
Mother ship. Plus MAS surface units will be easy meat for capture without force protection! Still the RN always has the right talk which is cheap!
Alasdair
The statement made by the editor, and repeated by you, really does need expanding upon:
the RN found that “recovery and launching and sense of packages from USVs is exceptionally complex, especially in the interaction between the platform, the sea and seabed”.
I really cannot belive that, reading this article in December 2024, that this very basic and very fundamental engineering issue – i.e. of launching when there are waves on the sea – has still not been solved by the RN’s MCM programme /project managers
Thus, after more than a full decade of development – which has has been conducted at vast expense to us taxpayers – we only now find out that the buffons at Quinetqi have not been able to do even the very basic beginners stuff – i.e they still cannot launch and recover a small minehunting UUV either off or on a USV anywhere – except on the Serpentine
……however that is fundamental to how the new RN MCM system operates…
Without launch and recovery working propoerly = everything else is quite useless
In the meantime, as several others have quite-rightly pointed out above, the RN’s manned MCM ships have now mostly been paid off..
Accordingly, as of today, we (UK PLC) do not have a proper minehunting capability – not even for use in home waters and thus when we are operating in a permissive environment.
A classic Whitehall farce of firstly over-promising on “Big Tech” and then, ten years later ……….quite-dramatically under-deliverying on real life capabilities.
So = only one thing for it…..
….whosoever initially promised ministers that this innovative combination of USV and UUV’s could deliver the RN a properly effective minehunning capability now needs to be given a chrisp and shiney P45 by Santa Claus in their Xmas stocking next week.
That might (just) set an example to other Q-level buffons not to B***S**T……….
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Craning or lowering anything over the side is a complex evolution even today.
The problem many have with drones isn’t so much the robotic technology itself because similar technology has been in use for decades but with the lack of understanding of what is needed to operate such at sea efficiently and safely.
WIZ
Agreed
Hence my very strong critisum (above) of the Q buffoons = they did not get the basics right before they moved off onto the advanced stuff
Unmanned MCM is a classic case of over-promising and under-delivering!!
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
I think many here think that a torpedo sized object will be dropped over the side and automatically go on to clear whole square kilometres of sea floor without human intervention. All of this they can be stuffed into a few shipping containers and flown anywhere. They have no idea that modern AI is very stupid. They have given no thought to drone’s endurance or mechanical limits. They have given no thought to the operational and logistical problems involved in MCM operations not just in permissible environment but in those of direct confrontation too.
The RN has lost its MCM capability, once the finest, not because this new approach is better but because there is no money. Simple as that.
Unmanned squadrons in the USAF tend to have more personnel than manned squadrons.
Unmanned means ‘remotely manned’………
Yes. The sea surface doesnt follow any rules and the best designers can model with is say the 90th percentile waves and its much like future climate modelling is semi educated guesswork.
But hey ….funding does follow as the rubes love any thing that says digital or algorithms
Is that how it works in China or only apply to the West?
Ahhh, that’s better.
This is why we should have kept the Waves. I buy some of the arguments about Bulwark/Albion not being manable (I don’t agree) but one of the Waves could of been and having an AOR in that part of the world would no doubt help our allies and would maintain our presence.
Treasury edicts require operational spending cuts to produce a yearly efficiency dividend of around 2% or so- ie that is a cut in such spending. Thats on top of the annual financial charge of around 6-8% on capital assets- which goes to Treasury coffers- which for military is the expensive equipment and bases.
Ships laid up reduce operational spending , ships taken out of service reduce capital charges
year after year after year….
It’s all fake money though…. and in the real world there were two paid for assets which didn’t need that much crew (Especially as you have crews coming off other decommissioned ships) that could have helped with presence and mass….
It has suddenly occurred to me that there is one facility missing from this article – Duqm.
I seem to recall that there’s a docking facility there and infrastructure for the armu to exercise in the Omani desert.
Has this now “gone away”, as a result of its proximity to Yemen?
Mac
You really need to catch up with last years news
44th Chinese naval escort taskforce concludes visit to Oman – China Military
And yes…………………………..,
This is the conutry of Oman, which as been – for the past few hundred years – one of the UK’s key allies in the region
the very-same Oman which controls the southern half of the Straits of Hormouz
…………..the choke point through which much of the western world’s oil supply flows….
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
It would be fun if Russia now freed from Syria decides to redeploy those assets to Iran.
Unlike Syria Iran is practically a neighbour of Russia; resupply over the Caspian or via the Stan’s would be easy.
A couple of Kilo’s crewed by competent crews swimming about the Gulf would bring yet more notice to T31’s lack of ASW capability.
It hasn’t.
The European Patrol Corvette is pretty close to what I am describing here, though I would add a Phalanx mount to the top of the hangar and move the small artillery somewhere else on the ship. But otherwise I see a lot to like here.
The blog post that featured the following schematic dates from 2021 and so it is not completely up to date, but again, pretty close. On a vessel of this size I prefer the 57 mm rapid fire gun (rather than the 75 mm indicated in the drawing) because at 220 rpm it might have some utility against drones and cruise missiles.
https://chuckhillscgblog.net/2021/11/03/european-patrol-corvette/
Hi we are building type 31 a very flexible basic design one possible has already been looked at on this site.
https://www.navylookout.com/babcock-showcases-stretched-arrowhead-140-multi-role-naval-platform-concept-with-view-to-type-32-frigate-competition/
I suspect this would be quicker and easier to achieve and we all know speed is essential.
Better off with (a properly equipped) T31 as it is too small. It’s not worth the UK’s while deploying anything that can’t do 7,500nm plus or that can’t keep station with the carriers.
I get that perspective. All I’m saying is that if that is the case, then the path out of the woods for the RN is clearly marked: keep building more T31s until the crisis is (hopefully) past. You can figure the rest out later.
There will be no end to the ‘crisis’ I fear.
” too small…not worth the UK’s while deploying anything that can’t do 7,500nm plus “
hello, the 2 rivers have been in Indo Pacific for 2+ years
https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2022/04/the-royal-navys-river-class-keeping-the-uks-indo-pacific-tilt-afloat/
Hello! HELLO! HELLO! I thought we were talking about escorts not OPV’s?
So an even larger escort such as T31 can never be ‘too small’ either as OPVs successfully can and do the mission
We do only BREXIT and no European
.
76mm has guided rounds and it is water cooled so it can fire continuously for a long time which will be essential for drone fighting.
It isnt WW2 , naval guns fire now small bursts of say 5 when they arent single rounds, as the targeting now is highly accurate. Maybe a second burst is required but unlikely
You will have swarms which means several successive engagements.
Hmm. Still not sure it can maintain the rate of fire you would need for that purpose, but thanks.
I cannot believe what Government has been doing to the RN, and the Forces, in general, since the 1960s.