Deterrent cannot be guaranteed with three subs, and carrier rumours false says Navy chief
Michael Evans, Defence Editor
The Royal Navy will only be able to "guarantee" continuous deterrent patrols with Trident ballistic-missile submarines if the Government agrees to keep four boats, the head of the Royal Navy told
The Times yesterday.
It would be possible to get by with three submarines, provided the Government was prepared to risk breaking the 24-hour, 365-day patrol cycle that had been maintained for 41 years. Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope said that Gordon Brown had posed a perfectly legitimate question when, in planning for Trident's replacement, he asked the Navy to study whether the nuclear deterrent patrols could be fulfilled with three boats.
The Government announced in 2006 that it planned to replace the four-boat ballistic-missile Vanguard class boats with a new submarine system and an upgraded Trident being developed in the US. The programme, with four new boats, would cost £20 billion, and the first submarine has to be ready for service in 2024.
Admiral Stanhope said that in response to the Prime Minister's question, posed this year, the Royal Navy was examining whether it would be feasible to rely on three submarines. At any one time one of the boats would be in refit and another would be coming out of or preparing for refit, leaving just one submarine available for operational service, he warned.
'We can see no case for the cancellation of Trident by any future government'
"If there were to be a major incident on board, such as a fire, this could cause the continuous patrol cycle to be broken," Admiral Stanhope said.
The First Sea Lord and the other two Service chiefs will be playing a significant role in the defence review to take place after the general election, and work is already under way on the broad objectives.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, has told the Ministry of Defence staff that "support for operations in Afghanistan is now the main effort for defence".
While agreeing that Afghanistan had to take priority, Admiral Stanhope warned that it should not be the focus of all planning. "When Afghanistan is consigned to the history books there will still be a whole lot of different issues in the future which we will have to deal with, such as the security aspects arising from climate change and energy supplies, and 95 per cent of Britain's trade goes by sea," he said. Britain also had 14 dependent territories that required security guarantees.
Conscious of the different requirements of the three Services, he said his fellow chiefs agreed that the building of two large aircraft carriers would have multiple uses for the future, although, he admitted, "resources are going to be extremely tight".
If Britain wished to retain an interventionist role in the world, the carriers, which he said would be 64,000 tonnes, would provide a platform for ground-attack aircraft, helicopters, air defence assets and unmanned aerial vehicles (reconnaissance drones). They would also have hospital facilities.
Admiral Stanhope acknowledged that the Army and the RAF might have slightly different priorities when limited resources were shared out.
The Government, he said, was committed to building two aircraft carriers, and it made little sense to start talking about scaling them down to smaller ships. He dismissed a report that one of the carriers might be switched to a helicopter carrier, instead of having the Joint Strike Fighter F35, the replacement for Harriers. "We can put more helicopters on the platform if we want but we will not be converting one of the 64,000-tonne carriers into a helicopter carrier," he said.
The admiral said that the £4 billion carrier programme involved 10,000 workers and 57 British companies. He also pointed out that a considerable amount (about £1 billion) had already been spent on the two ships which will be called HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. The two carriers which would be around for 40 years, represented "a good investment".
He also underlined the multiple roles to be played by the fleet of Astute class nuclear-powered submarines, the first of which set sail yesterday from Barrow-in-Furness for sea trials.
Admiral Stanhope regretted that the Astute programme was four years late, but he said this was because Britain had stopped building submarines for a period, and the skills had had to be rediscovered.
Astute decision
• The Royal Navy is to be given seven Astute-class submarines, although the defence review next year might lead to a scaling back of this capability. The Navy was initially promised eight vessels
• Measuring nearly 328ft (100m) from bow to stern, HMS Astute is longer than ten London buses, and will be able to circumnavigate the globe while submerged
• Two aircraft carriers cost £4 billion. Four new Trident subs plus missiles costs £20 billion
• Navy chiefs get upset when the campaign in Afghanistan is described as an army operation: 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines, part of the Royal Navy, has served two six-month tours
Source: Times database
http://www.timesonline.co...ws/uk/article6920910.ece