NEWS RELEASE
Saturday 30 March 2013: Release time immediate
ROYAL NAVY ‘LOSING ITS CRITICAL MASS’,
SAYS DEFENCE ASSOCIATION
The Royal Navy is losing its critical mass, both in ships and personnel, after 10 years of defence cuts, according to the UK National Defence Association (UKNDA). In the past decade it has shrunk to a third of its Cold War size despite the broadening of its mission portfolio.
Cdr John Muxworthy RN, Chief Executive of the UKNDA, says that the Navy has been worst hit of all three Services by cuts to the defence budget during the Blair/Brown and Cameron governments. “We have too few surface ships in today’s Navy, too few submarines, too few aircraft, and too few people,” he says. “Having watched the Service shrink through ill-thought-out funding cuts, morale in the Navy has taken a nosedive. The Government claims it cannot afford to maintain force levels – but the reality is that we cannot afford not to.”
An article by Francis Beaufort, entitled “Has the Royal Navy’s critical mass gone?”, in the April issue of Warships International Fleet Review traces the reductions in the Navy between 1982 (the Falklands conflict) and the present day, and looks in particular at the impact on Britain’s maritime defence capabilities of the cuts made by the Coalition Government’s Strategic Defence & Security Review (SDSR-2010).
“Ships and people are being worn out”, writes Francis Beaufort, “and the discarding of whole elements of maritime capability – including strike carriers, Maritime Patrol Aircraft and Type 22 frigates – has knocked morale severely, particularly with thousands of highly skilled and experienced sailors being made redundant since 2010…. The skill pool has already shrunk due to the SDSR redundancies and there will be only 29,000 sailors and marines in the Royal Navy by 2020, compared with over 36,000 in 2004 and 73,000 in 1982.”
In an Open Letter to the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary, enclosing a copy of this article, Admiral The Rt Hon The Lord West of Spithead, Patron of the UKNDA and former First Sea Lord, says:. “We live on an island and more than 90% of everything that goes to and from this country goes by sea. In this highly dangerous and chaotic world with the inevitability of strategic shock, I believe our nation is standing into danger.”
Copies of Francis Beaufort’s article and of the recent UKNDA report “The State of the Nation’s Armed Forces”, co-authored by Admiral The Lord West, General Sir Michael Rose and Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, may be downloaded from the UKNDA website, www.uknda.org.
-ENDS
Note for editors: The UK National Defence Association (UKNDA) was formed in 2007 to make the case for strong national defence and properly-resourced Armed Forces.
For further information, contact: Cdr John Muxworthy RN, Chief Executive Officer UKNDA, tel 01364 652369, mobile 07721 624980, email ceo@uknda.org, or Andy Smith, Public Relations Officer UKNDA, tel 07737 271676, email pro@uknda.org
UK National Defence Association, PO Box 819, Portsmouth PO1 9FF.
www.uknda.org – Follow us on Twitter @DefenceAssoc
www.warshipsifr.com
HAS RN CRITICAL MASS GONE?...
AMERICAN SSNs...NORWAY’S AEGIS GUARDIANS...PERUVIAN FLEET IS JAPAN UNDER SIEGE? US NAVY CRUNCH TIME PIRATES SEEK OUT NEW PREY
April 2013 £4.20 3 Wales);
4 x SSBNs, 5 x SSNs (Astute and Ambush, first two of new SSNs also on sea trials but not yet in full front line service);
1 x Type 42 destroyer,
6 x Daring Class (Type 45) destroyers (not all yet in service, at least four currently available);
13 x Duke Class (Type 23) frigates;
2 x helicopter carriers; 2 x assault/command ships;
3 x landing ships.
Ships of today are more capable, but are being worked harder.
While the Argentinean Navy of 2013 poses no threat at all in a conventional sense, the Royal Navy has plenty to handle in other threat zones. Aside from the need to run counter piracy and anti-terrorism patrols, there is the ever-looming danger of the Iranians closing the Strait of Hormuz (cutting off much of the UK’s energy supplies). Both in Asia-Pacific and the Arctic conventional naval threats are rising. Of the two new carriers, only one will be in commission.
The Queen Elizabeth will not embark her first jets until 2018, meaning the UK has been without any fixed-wing strike capability at all for seven years.
Even then it will take some time to work up and while the QE will be able to embark up to 36 F-35s, in reality she will probably only ever have half a dozen in normal circumstances. And that may take until 2030 to achieve. The Royal Navy is going to invest in a new generation of Type 26 Global Combat Ships (otherwise known as multi-role frigates).
However, only 13 are to be built, while it is taking a very long time to bring the new Astute Class SSNs into service at a time when their Trafalgar Class predecessors are already being decommissioned. With the rule of thumb to calculate how many ships are available at any one time being one in three, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the RN of today, and possibly also tomorrow, lacks critical mass.
If the Royal Navy can get more than four Type 23s, two Type 45s and one SSN to sea in 2013 for simultaneous operations it comes at a cost in wear and tear on both vessels and people.
The skill pool has already shrunk due to the SDSR redundancies and there will be only 29,000 sailors and marines in the Royal Navy by 2020, compared with over 36,000 in 2004 and 73,000 in 1982.
The great fear in some quarters - including the MoD itself - is that while new ships, submarines and aircraft may be brought into service there might not be enough trained personnel to operate them.
The battle for critical mass in people and equipment is what lies at the heart of Mr Hammond’s public call for no more big defence cuts. have to make some pretty savage cuts.
My reading of it is that will happen again.” For years former senior naval officers have been issuing siren calls that the Royal Navy is now too small. It was under the last Labour government that the real decline in critical mass began, in 2004/05.
Until then the British fleet was about half its Cold War strength, but today it has been reduced to around a third (both in ships and personnel).
Yet the Royal Navy’s mission portfolio is arguably broader and more demanding than it was even during some phases of the Cold War. Ships and people are being worn out and the discarding of whole elements of maritime capability - including strike carriers,
Maritime Patrol Aircraft and Type 22 frigates - has knocked morale severely, particularly with thousands of highly skilled and experienced sailors being made redundant since 2010. Anniversaries of the Falklands War always provoke doom-laden predictions that the Royal Navy could not do it again, and a comparison of critical mass in major RN vessels in 1982 with how it stands today is shocking.
1982: 1 x ASW/Harrier carrier, 1 x ASW/Commando carrier; 2 x assault ships; 4 x ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), 12 x Fleet/attack boats (SSN), 6 x diesel/patrol subs (SSK); 15 x destroyers; 46 x frigates. 2013: No carriers (2 x in build, Queen Elizabeth and Prince of by Francis Beaufort Political Correspondent Anxiety over the Royal Navy losing its critical mass not only in terms of ships, but also in people has leapt, with the Secretary of State for Defence stating he is going to resist further cuts.
Philip Hammond told a BBC TV reporter that any additional severe reduction in the Armed Forces’ budget would risk “eroding military capability further.”
The Defence Secretary was in Norway this month to watch Royal Marines training on Norway’s northern flank at a time when Russia is once more building up its naval forces in a bid to dominate the Arctic. Mr Hammond added: “
We have some very challenging targets ahead of us to deliver the outcome of the last spending review and I’m clear that we won’t be able to deliver big further savings.”
He agreed that the coalition government does need to look at making savings across departments, but Mr Hammond is clearly concerned that while certain areas, such as Welfare, are ring-fenced,
Defence is not despite taking heavy hits in 2010’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). In recent months the head of the UK Armed Forces,
General Sir David Richards, and more recently former Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey have expressed fears the Royal Navy is now too small. In an interview published in the February edition of ‘The House’ - Parliament’s own in-house magazine -
Harvey said: “We [have] lost things we could not afford to lose already. The Royal Navy has got too few vessels in service, too little manpower, to execute the tasks already being asked of it.” Even before Mr Hammond hinted he would dig in his heels to prevent further serious reductions in defence spending, the former Armed Forces Minister said (again in ‘The House’): “We spent the summer of 2010 believing that [Prime Minister David] Cameron would save us from cuts and then it became clear we were going to HAS THE ROYAL NAVY’S Critical Mass Gone? Scarce resource: The frigate HMS Westminster operates with the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. Photo: Christina Naranjo/US Navy. Sailors aboard HMS Ark Royal, returning home after the 2003 Iraq War, wave to crowds ashore at Portsmouth. Eight years later the ship was axed from the fleet. Photo: Jonathan Eastland/AJAX.
NEWS RELEASE
Saturday 30 March 2013: Release time immediate
ROYAL NAVY ‘LOSING ITS CRITICAL MASS’, SAYS DEFENCE ASSOCIATION
The Royal Navy is losing its critical mass, both in ships and personnel, after 10 years of defence cuts, according to the UK National Defence Association (UKNDA). In the past decade it has shrunk to a third of its Cold War size despite the broadening of its mission portfolio.
Cdr John Muxworthy RN, Chief Executive of the UKNDA, says that the Navy has been worst hit of all three Services by cuts to the defence budget during the Blair/Brown and Cameron governments. “We have too few surface ships in today’s Navy, too few submarines, too few aircraft, and too few people,” he says. “Having watched the Service shrink through ill-thought-out funding cuts, morale in the Navy has taken a nosedive. The Government claims it cannot afford to maintain force levels – but the reality is that we cannot afford not to.”
An article by Francis Beaufort, entitled “Has the Royal Navy’s critical mass gone?”, in the April issue of Warships International Fleet Review traces the reductions in the Navy between 1982 (the Falklands conflict) and the present day, and looks in particular at the impact on Britain’s maritime defence capabilities of the cuts made by the Coalition Government’s Strategic Defence & Security Review (SDSR-2010).
“Ships and people are being worn out”, writes Francis Beaufort, “and the discarding of whole elements of maritime capability – including strike carriers, Maritime Patrol Aircraft and Type 22 frigates – has knocked morale severely, particularly with thousands of highly skilled and experienced sailors being made redundant since 2010…. The skill pool has already shrunk due to the SDSR redundancies and there will be only 29,000 sailors and marines in the Royal Navy by 2020, compared with over 36,000 in 2004 and 73,000 in 1982.”
MF
-2-
In an Open Letter to the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary, enclosing a copy of this article, Admiral The Rt Hon The Lord West of Spithead, Patron of the UKNDA and former First Sea Lord, says:. “We live on an island and more than 90% of everything that goes to and from this country goes by sea. In this highly dangerous and chaotic world with the inevitability of strategic shock, I believe our nation is standing into danger.”
Copies of Francis Beaufort’s article and of the recent UKNDA report “The State of the Nation’s Armed Forces”, co-authored by Admiral The Lord West, General Sir Michael Rose and Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, may be downloaded from the UKNDA website, www.uknda.org.
-ENDS Note for editors: The UK National Defence Association (UKNDA) was formed in 2007 to make the case for strong national defence and properly-resourced Armed Forces.
For further information, contact: Cdr John Muxworthy RN, Chief Executive Officer UKNDA, tel 01364 652369, mobile 07721 624980, email ceo@uknda.org, or Andy Smith, Public Relations Officer UKNDA, tel 07737 271676, email pro@uknda.org
UK National Defence Association, PO Box 819, Portsmouth PO1 9FF.
www.uknda.org – Follow us on Twitter @DefenceAssoc
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