Steve Prest says the Royal Navy must be demonstrably ready to fight and win in the North Atlantic, but the First Sea Lord has three big constraints
Over the weekend, I wrote about the parlous state of the Royal Navy’s frigate force and that this necessitated a new strategy.
As trailed, this was delivered by the First Sea Lord at the International Sea Power Conference. I invited readers to “watch this space” – thank you for coming back so soon!
General Sir Gwyn Jenkins set out the case for the new strategy, driven by the unchanging nature of sea power, geography and the UK’s alliances; and also by the evolving threats and changes in technology.
That the Russians now pose a clear and present danger to Nato and the rules-based international order is as obvious as it is troubling.
Emboldened by policies of the current US administration, as articulated in their new National Security Strategy, the adventurism that we have seen in Ukraine is held at bay elsewhere only by credible deterrence.
An artist’s impression of the new Type 31 frigates – all five ships are planned to be in service with the Royal Navy by the early 2030s (Picture: MOD)
But that deterrence is fragile; both because of questions about the will of the US to fight on behalf of Nato allies and, as observed by the First Sea Lord, that our advantage in the North Atlantic is hanging by a thread.
Russia may be bleeding out in Ukraine, but it is still investing heavily and is a formidable adversary in other theatres, notably the North Atlantic.
To my mind, the message that Gen Sir Gwyn was really sending to the Russians is: ‘Look at what the Ukrainian Navy was able to do to your fleet in the Black Sea. Imagine what we can do to your Northern Fleet if we adopt similar technologies and apply them to augment our capabilities in the North Atlantic. It’s not worth it, so don’t even think about it.’
Deterrence, to be effective, must be credible. And that is the challenge.
Royal Navy Duke-class Type 23 frigate HMS Lancaster has been retired following almost 35 years protecting Britain and her interests across the seas
Setting to one side questions of political will, the Royal Navy must be demonstrably ready to fight and win in the North Atlantic, alongside allies, in order to minimise the chances of having to do so.
Gen Sir Gwyn is thus a man on a mission and in a hurry, and he has three big constraints in readying his service for war.
The first of those is time. Navies are (or at least have been), by their nature, capital assets for the nation. Ships, especially complex ones, take time to build; the infrastructure and skills to build them take longer still to establish. Many of the Navy’s existing surface combatants are, to put it politely, showing their age.
Nonetheless, there are 13 frigates on order for the Royal Navy, but only a very few of them will enter service in the next three years.
You can build ships more quickly than we have chosen to (for budgetary reasons), but you can’t do it from a standing start. 1SL simply doesn’t have the time to build a new fleet or wait for the one being built to arrive.
According to the MOD’s latest personnel statistics, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines have 300 fewer trained people than they did this time last year (Picture: Royal Navy)
Secondly: people. Even if all of those new frigates did turn up in the next couple of years, fully armed and ready to go, he wouldn’t have the sailors to crew them.
According to the MOD’s latest personnel statistics, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines have 300 fewer trained people than they did this time last year. That’s about two frigate ships’ companies worth!
The good news is that recruitment and gains to the trained strength are currently exceeding outflow, but it will take time to grow these people through the system – the Navy is a bottom-fed organisation.
Finally: money. The Ministry of Defence has ambitious plans to deliver an ‘always on’ shipbuilding pipeline, leading to the productivity improvements that come through mastery by continual doing and learning.
But such a pipeline is not backed by the necessary funding to meet the policy ambition. The Defence Investment Plan is yet to be published, but that we cannot afford the entirety of the ambition is no secret. Hard choices will have to be made.
HMS Formidable is the third Type 31 frigate being built for the Royal Navy, which will replace the existing Type 23 frigates (Picture: MOD)
So Gen Sir Gwyn is in a bind. How to ready a service for war in a peacetime political economy and with time against him?
Out of necessity comes opportunity. Hence, this week’s announcement of the Hybrid Navy strategy.
The big idea is that adopting the advances in autonomy, robotics and AI can rapidly deliver the kind of fighting capabilities that hitherto have been the preserve of high-end military platforms.
The hypothesis has yet to be fully tested for the sort of missions envisaged in the Atlantic – the direct lessons from Ukraine only get you so far.
The big bet is that delivering credible anti-submarine warfare, air defence and maritime strike effects against one of the most competent adversaries in the world can be done quickly, simply and cheaply, using such technology, and within the prevailing constraints.
But given that the previous strategy definitely wouldn’t work, such a “Hail Mary” option is all that is left. Is there anything in it? Well, happily, yes!
The Atlas ARCIMIS minesweeper takes part in the world’s first large-scale demonstration of marine robotic systems hosted by the UK at the Royal Navy-led Unmanned Warrior 16 (Picture: MOD)
Since I was invited to be the inaugural Fleet Robotics Officer in 2014, I have been an advocate for transforming the Navy through the adoption of autonomous and uncrewed systems.
In order to demonstrate their potential, we created Exercise Unmanned Warrior in 2016. This was the first of its kind as a mass demonstration of the potential of maritime robotic systems in an operationally relevant environment and was run alongside the large, multinational Joint Warrior exercise of that year.
The Second World War demonstrated conclusively that distributed off-board systems, operating at range to find and defeat the adversary, trump complex units reliant on their onboard sensors and weapons. In other words: aircraft carriers beat battleships!
The limitation hitherto has been the necessity to put a human in the offboard system. Advances in autonomy, computing, and miniaturisation of platforms, sensors and weapons mean that this is no longer always necessary. Making this leap will unlock huge potential to deliver such maritime combat effects in a very different way.
There are 13 frigates on order for the Royal Navy, but only a very few of them will enter service in the next three years, says Steve Prest
Having done some serious thinking on this for the Royal Navy, and led one of the pathfinder programmes doing this, I can attest to the fact that it won’t be as quick, cheap or easy as the techno-optimists would like to believe. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t merit in the approach, nor that we shouldn’t get on with it.
Had we chosen to put our foot to the floor on this 10 years ago, we might be further ahead now, but some ideas are ahead of their time. But that was then, and this is now, and the only choice that you ever really get in life is what you do next.
The First Sea Lord has called for action. He rightly says there is no alternative, and I think he’s right.
Best we roll up our sleeves and get turned to the task then. The clock is ticking!
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