Editorial

RN Year in Review - 2000
16 January 2001

The long awaited Year 2000 proved to be quite a mixed year for the Royal Navy.  It started very badly... the cut backs announced in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review were biting savagely and the newspapers were full of reports of exercises cancelled due to lack of money, ships stuck in port to save fuel, a Defence Medical Service collapsing due to lack of funds and false economies, and rumours that yet more ships were about to be scrapped or paid-off to make ends meet.  However, in later months of the year the tide turned slightly and thankfully there are a number of good news items to report in this editorial.

Perhaps the single most important event of the year was the announcement on 20 December 2000 by the Ministry of Defence that a contract worth about £1 billion had been awarded to BAE Systems to design and build the first batch of three Daring Class Type 45 air defence destroyers.  The Type 45's are urgently needed as replacements for the obsolete Type 42 destroyers, which will average 29 years old when replaced by the Type 45.  The first Type 45 destroyer, HMS Daring, should enter service in late 2007, and up to 12 ships should be in service by 2014.  Its worth noting that these ships are the first warships to be ordered by the government after four years in power.  Warship construction is at an historic low and the only surface combatant currently under construction at a shipyard (excluding the Albion class LPD's) is the last Type 23, HMS St. Albans. 

Details of the specification of the Type 45 destroyer are slowly emerging and its now clear that it will be a substantial ship of about 7000 tonnes full load with a revolutionary Full Electric Propulsion System powered by Rolls Royce WR-21 gas turbines.  The primary armament will consist of an advanced Sampson/PAAMS air defence system with a battery of super agile Aster 15/30 missiles, this combination seems likely to prove equivalent or even superior to the latest version of the American AEGIS system with Standard 2 MR/ER missiles.  Due to funding restricting some desired equipment (e.g. Harpoon SSM's) will be missing from the ships as completed, but overall, the specification of the Type 45 destroyer represents a significant advance over equivalent role ships in other European navies - such as the Dutch (LCF), Spanish (F-100) and German (F-124) destroyers.  The Type 45 will also have a significantly greater range and endurance than any of these designs, thanks partly to its advanced Integrated Electric Propulsion system.  The Type 45 will have a much smaller missile battery than existing AEGIS/Standard equipped American (Arleigh Burke), Japanese (Kongo) destroyers, and the planned South Korean (KDX-3) destroyers, but the potential to increase the number VLS cells from 48 to 64 on the Type 45 does improve the situation.  The Type 45 is also sometimes compared with the new DD 21 Land Attack Destroyer being developed United States Navy which is due to enter service from 2010, only three years after the Type 45.  However the role of the two ships will be completely different so any comparison is rather pointless.

In June a long awaited order for two 3,500 tonnes Survey Ships was finally placed with Appledore Shipbuilders at a value of about £130 million.  The two ships will be called HMS Echo and HMS Enterprise.  Disappointingly, a third ship which had also been expected to be ordered has presumably been cancelled. 

Other good news was the somewhat unexpected (although already two years late) announcement on 26 October that four Alternative Landing Ship Logistics at a cost of about £300 million would be built to a Swan Hunter design, the first entering service by 2004.  An order for two of the ships valued at £140 million was actually placed on 19 December 2000 with Swan Hunter (Tyneside), to expedite construction the remaining two ships will be built at BAE Systems Marine's Govan shipyard, this order will being expected in 2001.

Also on 26 October an announcement was made that A.W.S.R. Shipping Ltd have been selected as the preferred bidder for a 25-year Private Finance Initiative contract valued at £800 million to provide a strategic sealift service.  Six Ro-Ro Strategic Sea Lift ships will be needed, although sadly to save money only two these will be built in a UK yard, at Harland & Wolff.  The remaining four will be built by the Flensburger yard in Germany.  All ships should be available by early 2004.

Another significant event in the year 2000 was the handover by Vosper Thornycroft to DERA of the Research Vessel Triton on 31 August.  With its revolutionary trimaran hull, Triton is said by its supporters to be possibly the most significant advance in warship design since the advent of ironclad warships 140 years ago! 

Sea trials started in September, and if the advantages of the hull form are proven then it may be used for the planned Future Surface Combatant (FSC), due to replace the Type 23 frigates and remaining Type 22 frigates from about 2013

Whether the FSC actually uses the trimaran hull form will partly depend on the UK's response to French suggestions  [e.g. Le Monde newspaper, 16 March 2000] that the two countries co-operate on their future carrier and frigate programmes.  In particular the French are very keen that the UK merges its requirement for 20 FSC's with their le projet «composante frégate» (Modular Frigate Project) for 15 Naval Action Frigates, which will probably be built in two versions: F-AVT "Frégates d'action vers la terre" (land attack frigates) and F-ASM "Frégates d'action-sous-marine" (anti-submarine frigates).  While collaborative projects are superficially attractive to politicians and budget approvers, recent experience (not least the disastrous Horizon Project!) has shown that they are always late, over budget, don't deliver what the RN requires, and that the French will ultimately insist on having managerial and industrial control of the Project - even when it's not justified by their own financial contribution.  A leak of a draft report by UK's National Audit Office says that multinational equipment programmes take almost 40% longer to deliver and cost up to twice the alternatives from Britain or other individual states.  Even where a collaborative project appeared to offer the best value at the outset, the report says, costs and delivery times quickly spiralled because of the inefficiencies of multinational production. on recent large equipment purchases.  It also found that for many recent defence orders ministers had ignored the recommendations of officials because of "political factors".  Lets hope that two critical RN projects are not stifled and delayed by British politician's anxious to be seen as "pro-European" and French demands and requirements.

Of long term importance to Royal Navy, on 18 July 2000 the outcome of the Governments "Comprehensive Spending Review" was announced.  The Defence Budget has suffered almost continuous real annual cuts since the late 1980's, in total amounting to about 30%, including cuts of 5% (or £1 billion) by the current government.  There were press reports early in the year that yet more cuts were being demanded by the Treasury, it was therefore a relief to find that the Defence Budget will in fact be increased very slightly.  From just under £23 billion this financial year (2000/01),  the budget will rise by £400 million in 2001/02 and reach almost £25bn in the financial year 2003/04.  Discounting inflation this is an increase in real terms of 0.1% in 2001/2, followed by real growth of 0.2% and 0.7% for the following two years.  These tiny increase's have been driven by the increasingly obvious impossibility of financing all the SDR promises and other commitments (Kosovo, Sierra Leone, ...) from a constantly declining departmental budget.  However, while the small amount of extra funds may delay some difficult decisions and avoid the embarrassment of immediate cancellation of some major SDR projects by a government about to seek re-election, it still remains to be seen whether there will be sufficient funds in the long term to pay for the all the big-ticket (CVF, A400M, Eurofighter, Typhoon, FCBA,...) procurements planned.

Another bright spot of 2000 was the welcome boost offered by the RN's and RM's performance off Sierra Leone on several occasions through the year, fully proving the new concepts of maritime operations that its been developing.  In mid-May the RN rapidly assembled and deployed a very significant Task Group, including the carrier HMS Illustrious (with a mixed RAF/RN Harrier/Sea Harrier airgroup embarked), the LPH HMS Ocean, two Landing Ships, two frigates and various RFA.  All in all it was a classic demonstration of the flexibility of "Sea Power" which was repeated in late October.  One oddity and disappointment though was the RN's unwillingness to publicise its deployment and activities more - unlike the RAF and Army operations which have enjoyed huge positive publicity.  The RN refused reporters access to its ships, so while there was frequent film from reporters flying in RAF Chinooks and accompanying Army patrols, a fuzzy shot of frigate on the horizon was often the best the RN usually got.  A lost PR opportunity.

Now moving on to the bad news ...  recruitment and manning has really become a major issue for the Royal Navy.  Year on Year the RN has been unable to maintain its strength and in the year 2000 yet again nearly one thousand more personnel left the RN than joined.  In an already under- strength force of just 43,000 (including over 6,000 Royal Marines) this represents a big problem.  Overall the RN is now 4.6% under-strength (theoretically, the crews of about 10 Type 23 frigates!), but the position is far worse in some key categories -  the RN is short of 30% of its Sea Harrier pilots, 21% short of Submarine Warfare Officers, and 9% short of Warfare Branch ratings.  These problems have been exacerbated by the effects of the disastrous freeze on recruitment in the early and mid-1990's, a whole generation of sailors who should now be Senior Rates and forming the experienced core of the Royal Navy is missing.  Efforts are being made to improve retention and recruitment, but the problem will clearly take years to resolve.  The situation has not been helped by the ever increasing civilian'isation of shore jobs which has reduced the ratio of shore to sea drafts/appointments for uniformed personnel - this has most badly affected the experienced but often married personnel that the Navy is trying to retain.  Also, signs continue of the effects of the 1998/9 run down of the RN's destroyer and frigate escort force from 35 to 31 ships (+1 ship at extended readiness).  To try to reduce "over-stretch" caused by too few ships to meet too many commitments, the West Indies Guard Ship will now be on station only 75% of the time, while the Armilla Patrol has been officially reduced to just one warship [in recent years the second ship has been in the general region "East of Suez", rather than actually in the Arabian Gulf itself.

Although the Year 2000 saw work on the long ordered new nuclear submarine HMS Astute finally start, it was generally been a very bad year for the submarine service.  The press has been full of stories about the constant and major problems being experience by the current generation of Swiftsure and Trafalgar Class submarines.  In particular the breakdown of HMS Tireless and her confinement  to the Gibraltar dockyard for repairs, the resulting Spanish protests, and the subsequent finding of similar major faults in six of the other eleven SSN's, made headlines around the world.  At the end of the year only one British SSN (HMS Triumph) was considered operational (and she suffered "superficial damage" after hitting the seabed on 19 November), a truly deplorable state of affairs for these massively capable but massively expensive warships.

Richard

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