The 'dying' Royal Navy; what the US can learn.

[Al R]

Reuters has a view..

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uk-military-navy-commentary-idUSKCN10L1AD

[2Planks]

Almost enough to make a man in Grenada spill his rum punch!

[Tankertrashnav]

Deeply depressing. I used to go past Devonport in the train and look at the warships and joke to Mrs TTN - "that's probably the whole of the fleet in there".
Now it seems I wouldn't be too far off :(

[Heathrow Harry]

That's what happens when Governments prioritise tax cuts and handouts (education, social security, pensions) over defence

No-one goes into bat for defence and the Ministers are all second raters with no stroke

[PPRuNeUser0139]

Let's hope the new carriers don't share the same reliability probs as the Type 45s..

[Expatrick]

"No votes in defence" - allegedly.

[Tourist]

Let's hope the new carriers don't share the same reliability probs as the Type 45s..

Is there any reason to think they would?

Apart from being grey, do they have anything in common?

[2Planks]

BAe Systems in one guise or another

[FAStoat]

I undersatand from an Authority close to a Cmdr (E) up at the Clyde ,that the Modules once built at Portsmouth,then transported up to Scotland,sometimes dont marry up to their counterparts.Even watertight doors are not able to actuate in their slots,and then small items like a Plinth onto which a Phalanx mounting is bolted,has its bolt holes not lining up with its flange plate,so someone could not even drill out from a template accurately.I suppose when the Aircraft wont arrive until 2020,someone can redo the job properly!!!!Can hope I suppose,but the sooner eveything is removed fom the Wicked Witch of the North's domain and returned South,then maybe we can have a Navy that will work!!!??

[mattandmoosdad]

A close family member, a project manager on that job would agree. However, the quality issues didn't lie with the Portsmouth teams

[Tourist]

BAe Systems in one guise or another


Yes, but that applies to pretty much every piece of equipment in our entire military.....

[Tankertrashnav]

No-one goes into bat for defence and the Ministers are all second raters with no stroke

Yep, its all "Health - Education - Health - Education" = mention defence and you are committing political suicide.

Billions have been chucked away on a university system where thousands of academically mediocre students are pushed through and given joke degrees. Meanwhile if we suddenly decided we were going to seriously invest in defence, would there be a sufficiently large skilled workforce to make the kit?

(btw PPRuNe spell checker, its defence on this side of the pond, not defense :*)

[NutLoose]

The bit that rankles is when politicians witter on that we may have less ships but they have greater capability and weaponry.

Great, but it doesn't hold water when you need one ship covering the South Atlantic and one in the Gulf region, and you have replaced the two lesser capable ships with one, that cannot be in two places at once.

[Not_a_boffin]

I undersatand from an Authority close to a Cmdr (E) up at the Clyde ,that the Modules once built at Portsmouth,then transported up to Scotland,sometimes dont marry up to their counterparts.Even watertight doors are not able to actuate in their slots,and then small items like a Plinth onto which a Phalanx mounting is bolted,has its bolt holes not lining up with its flange plate,so someone could not even drill out from a template accurately.

Given that when last I looked, all the Portsmouth modules (with the exception of one Island) were hangar deck and below, I suspect your contact may be mistaken. The sponson modules where the CIWS live were erected at Rosyth, mainly from steel fabricated in Appledore and shipped up.

Issues with marrying up large blocks will always arise. The difference in doing them between different shipyards is that it gets contractual rather than just the heads of the steel fab and shipbuilding departments in one shipyard having a shouting match and then just fixing the problem. Mountains and molehills one suspects - possibly compounded by RN personnel with limited experiences of working in build yards (as opposed to refit).

[NutLoose]

Maybe there reducing section sizes as the budget shrinks ;)

[BEagle]

Billions have been chucked away on a university system where thousands of academically mediocre students are pushed through and given joke degrees.

Quite true. The reason being that it kept Bliar's unemployment figures looking better than they really were.... A few kids doing 'meeja studies' or somesuch tosh at university, rather than being on the dole.

[engineer(retard)]

The initial production run of Eurofighter fuselage sections didn't line up either.

[tonker]

In a roundabout way, Mr Putin and his foreign ventures just might help these things change. I wander how an electorate that is forced to send £15 billion abroad as aid, is told there isn't enough money to defend them whilst they sleep.

[engineer(retard)]

Perhaps our technological edge is being eroded:

Are Russia's military advances a problem for Nato? - BBC News (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37045730)

[A_Van]

What a quick diversion from the RN to Russian army :-)


Engineer, please, look at the author of that artice - "a diplomatic correspondent" talking about electronic warfare :-) Plus an abracadabra about "Russian military operations in Ukraine". The guy is totally inconsistent: if the Russians are so smart, why did not they overtake Kiev in two days? The answer is obvious: there are no regular Russian troop in Ukraine :-) Advisors, some volunteers - yes, but on the other side there are many NATO advisors and volunteers from West and nobody cries about that.


Coming back to RN, this is probably a reflection of the "threat model" currently used by the politicians. Clearly it is not needed as far as Russia is concerned, but (from a trespasser point of view) regarding issues like Falklands, it should be kept in a good shape....

[andrewn]

There are some inaccuracies in the reuters article but the truth remains that the RN/FAA are effectively on life support and in dire need of rapid intervention. Sad times.

[Heathrow Harry]

"you have replaced the two lesser capable ships with one, that cannot be in two places at once."

bang on Nut!!! I understand why they keep uppinghte spec on ships but eventuaslly we'll finish up with one that can do everything - and it will have a radius of effectivness of maybe 100kms...................................

But until someone tells the electorate they're going to have to pay and take less we won't see any changes

[KenV]

....there are no regular Russian troop in Ukraine :-) Advisors, some volunteers - yes, but on the other side there are many NATO advisors and volunteers from West and nobody cries about that.Have you considered that people are "crying" about Russians in Ukraine because 1) they are the invaders and 2) they deny any direct involvement. And people are NOT crying about "NATO advisors and volunteers from West" because 1) Ukraine are the defenders trying to stop invaders and 2) no one is denying that Ukraine is getting outside help to repel invaders.

[andytug]

People forget recent history very quickly. Which given all the recent Brexit fuss and bother about immigrants is a surprise, people seem to have forgotten that our borders are water, so we need and have always needed an effective Navy to police them. That's before you commit anything abroad. I'd be interested to know exactly how many and what ships we currently have available to enforce our watery borders. I suspect the answer will be in single figures and nothing bigger than a trawler!

[MPN11]

Well, this little killer is in our local waters right now, I believe ...

HMS Gleaner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Gleaner_(H86))

[Wander00]

Funny you should mention HMS Gleaner. A few years back she was booked in to operate from "my" yacht club pontoon on the S Coast, but the last minute was diverted off to survey a wreck somewhere. Had looked forward to being entertained aboard.

[MPN11]

I suspect the Wardroom is a bit minimal, with just 2 officers on board!

[msbbarratt]

Here's me wondering if the sub fleet will end up bigger than the surface fleet...

Reports indicate that the A boats are perfectly capable of giving the USN a nasty surprise.

[Melchett01]

Yep, its all "Health - Education - Health - Education" = mention defence and you are committing political suicide.

... Meanwhile if we suddenly decided we were going to seriously invest in defence, would there be a sufficiently large skilled workforce to make the kit?

One might also ask if there would be a sufficiently large, skilled workforce to operate the kit? Consider that a rhetorical question, we all know the answer. Well, seemingly all apart from politicians and service Manning authorities, planners and financiers.

Unless of course the creeping normalisation of 12-14 hour days as the expected norm in a peacetime HQ for anyone above mid-level flt lt / equivalent means brute force manning will see it work right up to the point they need to surge to Op tempo only to realise the tank is empty.

Oh and as for Russians in Ukraine, of course there are. Try looking up signs of any social media savvy Russian squaddie and you'll find selfies taken in Ukraine all over the Internet of them operating as 'local resistance'. RUSI did a very good paper recently on how the Russians operate in the Info Ops arena; Ukraine is a textbook example. Apologies for the thread drift.

[racedo]

Does anybody have a clear statement of what the RN is there for ?

Seems like everybody expects it to be something but what is it's clear stated purpose ?

[Tourist]

Why should everything have to have a clear and stated purpose?

It is there like all militaries to do whatever is needed when asked.

The real world is not black and white and quantifiable no matter how much people will try to stick it in boxes.

[tucumseh]

Why should everything have to have a clear and stated purpose?Because that is the way the Government decrees our (MoD) financial planning works. (1) There shall be a Navy: (2) This is what it will do: (2) This is what we (the Navy) need to do it. (In descending order of decision maker seniority).

It is there like all militaries to do whatever is needed when asked.
Correct, although it is told. The Navy chiefs are in turn paid to tell politicians when this cannot be reconciled with (2) above. They seldom do.


The real world is not black and white and quantifiable no matter how much people will try to stick it in boxes.
Correct again, but given the above, some are paid (not a lot) to make decisions of what event is more likely to occur. Very often they are wrong, which is why we need a greater degree of built-in flexibility.

Most would be quite surprised how low a level many of these decisions are made at, and how small the RN's input is. Perhaps worse, the "box-ticking" exercise you mentioned was ditched about 25 years ago. At least it was a laid down process with robust procedures. Today, it's more like making it up as you go along.

[MPN11]

Perhaps worse, the "box-ticking" exercise you mentioned was ditched about 25 years ago. At least it was a laid down process with robust procedures. Today, it's more like making it up as you go along.That resonates with me. I left the RAF in 1993 ... meltdown followed ;)

[Hangarshuffle]

The country could try and get its navy back if it really tried, and could vote to build and pay for it-but I somehow doubt that day will come. The people are realists- they know as Britons we sold ourselves out a long time ago. Why pay for a Navy when our utilities are foreign owned, along with just about everything else? Future foreign powers that want to hurt us will not fire fight with us- they will close us out via trade agreements and decline to invest or trade with us.
We are not a great power and we are not even a military middling power any more. We don't want to be one. When will the penny drop?

* Just as an afterthought, when we were projecting the very last of our declining maritime air power - I give you the years 1992-99 with CVS in the Adriatic/Balkan situation-my question -Did it actually make a figs difference to the average man in our street what we did there, and how we did it? Why should he now be expected by some to dig deep and pay for a new expensive RN?

[MPN11]

Hard-Ball, Hangarshuffle, but I take your point!

Sadly, Joe Public isn't really inspired by the placement of ships, or pictures of them. They've moved on to imagery of air strikes on targets, regardless of how that's actually achieved. We have a lot to thank the WWW and Media input for that.

[Hangarshuffle]

The British people have been consistently indifferent to the fate of the Navy since about 1970, maybe even earlier. We make our own bed and we will all have to lie in it.
Facing up to it and in retrospection, I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone to join it anyway- its often hard, living conditions and harmony I would describe as difficult and at times its a bloody unpleasant life- neither is it well paid and any fringes it once had such as even a limited pension have gone to the dogs.
The picture that was floating around a few days ago of every one of the six Type 45's tied up in Portsmouth told its own story-that the recent management of the Navy, at many levels, in our recent time has been a disaster.
Do we really expect the public to now suddenly volte face and back up such a crock?

[Treble one]

The public may well look at the RN as having plenty of money spent on it of course.


The two new Aircraft carriers are costing billions, along with all those shiny new jets to operate off them. And the replacement for Trident has just been authorised, with the money ring-fenced from outside of the defence budget. And those Type 45's are not too cheap either....(even if most of them are a bit broken).


To the uninitiated, that looks like a lot of shiny new kit, at times when the RAF are reducing their front-line squadrons, and the Army are reducing their manpower.....?

[msbbarratt]

The British people have been consistently indifferent to the fate of the Navy since about 1970, maybe even earlier. We make our own bed and we will all have to lie in it.

Same is true for all our armed forces. Don't kid yourselves into thinking that people give a moments thought to the disposition of the RAF or Army either.

It's perfectly natural - all populations grow to under appreciate their armed forces during extended periods of peace at home. And WWII is now a dim and distant memory, and even today's young teenagers weren't born at the conclusion of Gulf War 2.

The RN has an important role to play. There's the ultimate Top Trumps winner - the nuclear deterrent. And whilst it's strike capability is small, it can put a Tomahawk down almost anywhere in the world at quite short notice and gives no prior warning of impending doom. In contrast the RAF often has to go and ask about borrowing an airfield somewhere before it can do anything, which limits it's usefulness when something discrete is called for.

And for a lot of the things going on at the moment, small discrete involvements are definitely flavour of the month. They always have been - the trouble in Malaysia and Borneo were successfully dealt with without the large scale involvement of RN, RAF and Army, back in the days when all three were much larger.

The thing that is generally quite tricky is "What to do About Russia if they Invade". It'll probably never need to come to it (all of Putin's money is in Switzerland; not even he's going to risk blowing his retirement plan...), but all of Western Europe would need to seriously tool up fast in all departments, not just the UK.

[ORAC]

And the replacement for Trident has just been authorised, with the money ring-fenced from outside of the defence budget. No longer true, I'm afraid, now it comes from the main budget, so other programmes will get salami sliced to support it.

Another of the legacies of Smiler George.....

Trident costs must come from MoD budget, Osborne says - BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10812825)

[MPN11]

Well, that article is 6 years old, and Osborne isn't Chancellor any more. Is there a prospect of a re-think, under a new PM and Chancellor?

[FODPlod]

...the trouble in Malaysia and Borneo were successfully dealt with without the large scale involvement of RN, RAF and Army, back in the days when all three were much larger...
Are you including Konfrontasi (Confrontation)?

[Exnomad]

Having spend some years on the bits that attach weapons to naval choppers, always annoyed they are only ever shown fishing things out of the oggin.
Whereas their primary job would be sinking enemy ships.
The choppers torpedo or missile would be a frigate's main armament.
The 4.5" popgun on the fore-deck would not be much use

[Bannock]

And another bites the dust...


UK loses operational maintenance and repair capability as Diligence is retired early | IHS Jane's 360 (http://www.janes.com/article/62912/uk-loses-operational-maintenance-and-repair-capability-as-diligence-is-retired-early)

[Bannock]

Just realized why.
There's nothing left to fix... Hat , coat, etc

[Heathrow Harry]

Don't need a mobile base when they're all parked up at Portsmouth or Plymouth anyway

[andytug]

My £0.02 worth....

The Navy should "defend the realm" along with the other armed forces as appropriate. Only after that is assured should we debate whether "force projection" is necessary, and if we decide it is, then you have to spend accordingly.
Problem is, the requirements change faster than the snails pace of procurement, so it's never right. Add inter-service bickering and top-heavy management (more admirals than ships?) and the results aren't good. Doing stuff on the cheap rarely works well, and when it does, it's usually down to the skill and bloody-mindedness of the guys at the pointy end somehow dragging it out of the fire.
Thing is none of our PPE graduate politicians ever seem to have bothered to study any history......

[brakedwell]

The Royal Navy will be even smaller when Scotland takes it share.

[Tourist]

Thing is none of our PPE graduate politicians ever seem to have bothered to study any history......

Neither have you by the sound of it.....


The idea that "defence of the realm" is best done at home is fallacious as any student of history will tell you.

Always fight on the enemies territory, and for that you need expeditionary.

[andytug]

Neither have you by the sound of it.....


The idea that "defence of the realm" is best done at home is fallacious as any student of history will tell you.

Always fight on the enemies territory, and for that you need expeditionary.

Probably didn't put it very well, was trying to be distinct between defending ourselves and (for example) trying to police the world with the US.
(Bit simplistic, it's a lot more complex than that).

[tucumseh]

the requirements change faster than the snails pace of procurement

Some years ago, after yet another uninformed rant by the Public Accounts Committee, it was suggested that the "customers" (Service users) be invited to comment on the best and worst procurement projects they'd experienced. After all, Post Project Reviews are written by the project manager, not the customer. Few bothered (itself a feature of procurement), but analysis of the successful projects revealed some embarrassing similarities and recommendations, most of which involved stripping out 3 or 4 layers of upper "management" involvement from both sides. By far the most successful RN project was notable for the RN's Aircraft Support Executive withdrawing support for it before the contracts were even let, leaving MoD(PE) to do the job properly in peace.

[Prangster]

Re retards comment on our technological edge being eroded. I suggest you keep an eye on Rolls Royce who whilst always screaming that they can't recruit enough engineering staff are quietly issuing redundancy notices to those they do have.