Originally Posted by
Frostchamber
I'd certainly agree that the RN needs more escorts. Current plan is for a carrier in a high risk area to be escorted by 2X T45 and 2X T26/23. Based on how things are currently done, in most scenarios you can probably add a US and a French asset to that. With 19 UK escorts (albeit as Hula says we have a couple currently alongside doing harbour training) that should be readily possible, leaving a few available to be in other places. Getting the balance right requires easing escort numbers upwards, not binning the carriers (which are paid for and bring a lot to the table, however much some on here would disagree) so that we can deploy escorts around the world with little to escort.
I don’t disagree with you that the RN needs to grow - even from my RAF side of the fence it strikes me as rather odd for an island nation with global aspirations to have such a small blue water fleet. But to say we need to increase the number of escorts to support the carrier rather than we need an effective fleet to carry out missions x,y & z does rather make it seem as though the carriers are now the RN’s mission. Either that or someone in Fleet Plans had incredibly big balls and worked on the theory that the loss of or inability to use a carrier would be so politically embarrassing and strategically damaging that HMG would have to provide funding for more ships thereby dragging the size of the fleet up. It’s an interesting question as I’m just reading Gen Richard Shirreff’s book War with Russia and the lack of effective escort screen is the primary cause for losing the carrier whilst it waited for the rest of the NATO TG to arrive.