As Royal Navy is reduced to a ‘historic low’ number of warships, Former First Sea Lord reveals the six conflicts that could easily ‘scupper’ our tiny fleet
Our country is still the fifth richest in the world but the lack of investment into the UK's defence is a worrying sign for us all
THE Royal Navy has been allowed to shrink to a “dangerous and historic low” leaving it unable to combat threats, MPs have warned.
With an annual budget of £12.5billion, the Navy’s fleet of just 19 frigates and destroyers – two of which are unusable – has been branded “pathetic” in a Defence Select Committee report.
The report says Britain could one day be unable to defend its own shores, let alone carry out the many security tasks it currently undertakes worldwide.
The Navy is reliant for future capability on two new aircraft carriers — which are not due to be delivered until next year and not operational before 2020 — and on replacements for its ageing frigates.
These are due to be retired at one a year from 2023 – but there is no timetable to replace them with the Global Combat Ship.
The MPs have warned that any delay in the modernisation would bring real dangers. So what if a new crisis blew up requiring the sort of naval response we last saw in the Falklands War in 1982?
The Navy has historically provided global stability — but in my 51 years of service I have never known such a chaotic world as the one we live in today.
There are a number of tasks we have fulfilled over the years that have helped to keep security and stopped wars. We are now not even fulfilling those.
I am particularly worried about Russia. Putin is talking about nuclear options, they are carrying out cyber attacks, taking down a French TV station, fighting in the Ukraine and threatening the Baltics.
Then you look in the Far East and you have China saying that the whole of the South China Sea is theirs.
You have North Korea. You have the Middle East, which is a complete mess with the Syrian war and fighting in Iraq.
Libya is a real problem and Yemen is falling apart.
These are tense situations which could all escalate rapidly, suddenly and affect us all.
If any one of a number of flashpoint scenarios happened and we had to respond, we would have difficulty in doing so.
In most cases our response would need to be to send a carrier battle group — that is an aircraft carrier with destroyer and frigate escort vessels, plus submarines.
At the moment we don’t even have any aircraft carriers, although two are meant to be operational by 2020. We are currently down to just 17 usable frigates and destroyers.
When a carrier deploys on some operation, whether it is the Falklands, something in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Far East or the Gulf, we don’t know what it will be and she has to be escorted and defended.
Without the escort it’s like having a football team with a brilliant striker, but no goalkeeper or defenders.
We absolutely need these frigates and destroyers.
They are able to do anti-air warfare, surface warfare, they can do things from humanitarian relief right up to hot war.They need to be able to operate right around the globe.
Our nation has global reach. We make a lot of money out of our investments in the Pacific Rim, South East Asia and South Asia, and stability there is crucially important for our trade with other countries.
The inability to place our ships there, stopping wars and keeping the peace, is very silly.
Our current problem goes back to the Strategic Defence Review of 2010 when the military was cut by 30 per cent.
If you look at cuts to frigates and destroyers over the last, say, 30 years there has been this steady big cutting process going on.
It is interesting, too, to note that about twice as many have been cut while the Conservatives have been in power as when Labour were in Downing Street, because one would imagine from the rhetoric it would be the other way around.
So you have that 30 per cent plus the reduction in manpower which had a huge effect.
The government of the day said they were going to order the new replacement frigates in 2010 but they did not.
And then we get to 2015 and ministers say: “Oh, yes, we are going to order them but there will only be eight and then the rest will be multi-purpose Type 31 frigates.”
This was a ship that was still yet to be designed. Then they didn’t order them anyway. Now they are finally being ordered, and the steel will start being cut next year but they are very much delayed and the cost will inevitably be greater.
I’ll only believe it, I’m afraid, when I stand on the quarter deck of a ship; I have had too many governments of lots of hues telling me porky pies about orders and deliveries and when ships will come.
This worries me enormously. With all the important roles around the world that the Royal Navy fulfils, or should fulfil, we really need some 27 frigates and destroyers, with another three for the carrier battle group.
At the moment, if we had to send a battle group anywhere it would drain ships from other vital work, such as counter terrorism, counter drug-smuggling, action against people smugglers and pirates, humanitarian work and protection of our dependencies.
In the Falklands there were two frigates and two destroyers sunk — one of them was mine — and two frigates and destroyers damaged.
That adds up to 16 destroyed or damaged, because in war that is what happens.
If we suffered casualties on that scale now it would wipe out the entire fleet.
One should also make allowances for accidents and loss days.
Of course, it’s all down to pressure on money — but governments can choose to find the money if they want to. It’s up to them to decide what to spend it on.
Our country is wealthy still — the fifth richest in the world. In 1991 our GDP was 40 per cent of what it is now and yet then we had three aircraft carriers; we had 50 destroyers and frigates; we had 30 submarines.
It’s a matter of what you decide you want to pay for.
The nation should be worried. I am certainly very worried about it.
Our military has been cut not just to the bone but actually into the bone, and in this very, very dangerous world that is not a good thing.
We used to be able to sleep in our beds because we had a very capable military.
We have been cutting our military again and again; taking risks, thinking: “Oh, it will all be all right.”
In naval terms, we are “standing into danger” — and we need a dramatic change of course before it is too late.
FALKLANDS
I don't think Argentina would invade again but you never know.
You would need a full task force with a carrier battle group.
You would also need frigates and destroyers to carry out naval gunfire support, and to support the amphibious forces.
So you need a big composite force.
You could probably just about do that when we have got the carriers, but we would not be able to do anything else in the world at all.
PUTIN'S PLANS
PUTIN is talking up nuclear and would love to know a lot more about our ballistic missile submarines.
If he pushed down Russian nuclear subs to try to trail one of our ballistic missile subs coming out of Faslane, we’d need to counter that.
We’d need nuclear attack submarines, which we have very few of; ASW frigates; all eight Type 23 frigates; two flat decks and the carriers are not around yet, so the helicopter carrier, something from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and lots of Merlin helicopters.
EASTERN MED
TENSIONS there are a worry.
It’s a sort of Turkey/Russia punch-up.
They have come near to conflict at times, partly over the Syrian border but wider than that as well.
Of course, Turkey is part of Nato and that would lead to a sort of naval confrontation in the Eastern Med – and we would have to be part of that.
We would like a carrier battle group but if not that, certainly we would need destroyers, frigates and submarines.
MIDDLE EAST
AFTER the election of Trump and with the possible collapse of America’s deal with Iran, if Iran started to build nuclear weapons and the Israelis decided to attack, the Iranians may assume the Americans were supporting their aggressors.
And that would likely cause another war in that region.
We couldn’t possibly not support the Americans and we would want a carrier battle group there with the supporting ships on the same sort of level.
KOREA
NORTH KOREA could start a war with South Korea.
We are one of the signatories of the ceasefire between them because we are one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
So we would have to get involved.
And the only way we could get involved would be a carrier group or SSNs (attack submarines).
SOUTH CHINA SEA
CHINA say they should have all waters in the South China Sea up to the “nine-dash line”.
A lot of people would not want to get involved in that, but the Americans, quite understandably, will call in their favours. And we would be a very strange ally if we didn’t support them.
But the only thing we can support them with is a carrier battle group and SSNs.
We would have that same problem that it would take all those ships – so the Navy could not do anything else.