Originally Posted by
Melchett01
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.
Yes interesting question as you say. It's certainly true that the carrier group IS intended to be a big part of the RN's mission. Hence a large part of the T45s' raison d'etre was always intended to be carrier escort. A carrier delivers military effect in a way that any number of escorts can't, and like it or not they are also a powerful part of defence diplomacy, as a number of other countries have realised. The calculation that has been made is that the RN does have enough escorts to run a carrier group and have a few left over for other tasking.
Also part of the rationale for the Type 31 frigate is to free up the 14 top tier escorts for the likes of carrier escort, while using the T31s for such things as maritime security, choke points and simply turning up - the stated aim being to increase numbers eventually beyond the current planned 5. The 5 new 90m OPVs can also do a job, within limits. The hope must be that the current review recognises some earlier increase in escort numbers as a priority and stumps up the cash to deliver that a bit sooner. Like them or not, binning the carriers now would make no sense at all, the priority should surely be to rebalance around them.