The Navy strikes back by Neil Tweedie 18 Jun 2009
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5560746/The-Navy-strikes-back.html"Rivalry among the three armed forces has flared into open warfare, as generals, air marshals and admirals strive to preserve their funding. And it is the Navy that is the most vulnerable.A formidable array of naval power greeted the visitor to Portsmouth last week. There was the carrier Invincible, veteran of the Falklands War, the air-defence destroyers Exeter, Nottingham and Southampton and the patrol ships Leeds Castle and Dumbarton Castle. Four Royal Fleet Auxiliary replenishment ships were there, too – Fort Austin, Oakleaf, Brambleleaf and Grey Rover. Together they would form a powerful flotilla, capable of projecting British influence to the far corners of the globe. But this task force will never sail.
All of the above vessels are mothballed or earmarked for disposal. Invincible is flagship of a ghost fleet, added to year by year as the Royal Navy, once mistress of the seas, shrinks inexorably. Government borrowing is reaching critical levels and the call for cuts grows louder in Whitehall. Defence, less sensitive in electoral terms than health, education and welfare, is already in the Treasury's sights. Gordon Brown has shown little affection for the military – it was he, after all, who combined the posts of Defence Secretary and Scottish Secretary, relegating supervision of the Armed Forces to the status of part-time job.
Unloved by their civilian masters, the Service chiefs have taken to fighting amongst themselves. Inter-service rivalry, always brewing under the surface, has flared into open warfare as generals, air marshals and admirals seek to preserve their slice of the crumbling budgetary cake. All three Service heads, General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, Chief of the Air Staff, and Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the First Sea Lord, retire next month. With nothing to lose, the gloves are off in the Ministry of Defence. A Royal Navy officer involved in planning puts it this way: "It is an appalling state of internecine warfare that has got to stop because otherwise it will allow the Treasury to move in and be more destructive than al-Qa'eda."
The defence budget, £38 billion last year, 2.2 per cent of GDP, is under severe pressure. It will not be cut in absolute terms but the rate of its growth will be reduced – resulting in 10 per cent less being spent over the next five years than originally planned. That may not sound too bad, until one factors in 'defence inflation'.
When a ship, aircraft or missile enters service it invariably costs more, usually much more, than the item it replaces. Greater complexity is a major factor but poor procurement decisions and bad project management often play a part. Even in a time of low general inflation the defence budget must grow to keep pace with defence inflation. A cut in the defence budget growth rate, exacerbated by the cost of the war in Afghanistan, means the elimination of cherished programmes. "The defence budget is abysmally under-funded, which means you do set up tensions," says Lord Boyce, former First Sea Lord and Chief of the Defence Staff.
The Royal Navy, supposedly the Senior Service, is most vulnerable. Despite having suffered years of cuts, it finds itself under attack from the Army and Royal Air Force. Their targets are two new 65,000-ton aircraft carriers, Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, intended to be the centrepieces of naval operations for the next half century. The largest ships ordered for the Navy, they will each be able to carry up to 36 advanced F35 Joint Strike Fighters, and are due to be commissioned in 2014 and 2016. Cost: about £4 billion for the ships and double that for the F35s. The Navy has sold off much of the family silver to fund the flat-tops, accepting brutal cuts in nuclear submarines, destroyers and frigates.
The Army is straightforward about the carriers: it thinks they are a waste of money. Last month, General Dannatt dismissed them as "Cold War relics", unsuited for modern warfare. Also taking a pop at Typhoon, the RAF's new fighter, he told his audience at Chatham House: "I can only conclude that much of our planned investment in defence is at the very least of questionable relevance to the challenges we face now and in the future."
He said it was wrong that only 10 per cent of the equipment budget for the period 2003-2018 was earmarked for land systems, such as armoured vehicles, when the Army was doing the bulk of the fighting. The generals want the other Services to 'get real' and stop wasting billions on hi-tech virility symbols. They would like the RAF to spend less on fast jets and more on the transport aircraft and helicopters needed to convey their troops to and from the battlefield.
But the most dangerous threat to the Navy comes from the RAF. Ever since its formation in 1918, the youngest of the Services has sought a monopoly of the nation's air power. For a time during the inter-war period it controlled naval aviation, and in 1966s managed to sink CVA-01, the Navy's proposed fleet carrier. The result of the RAF's bureaucratic victory was the near-defeat of Britain by Argentina in 1982 when the Navy found itself taking on an entire air force with just two under-sized carriers and a handful of jets.
The air marshals tried to strangle the Fleet Air Arm again this year by proposing to scrap the joint RAF-Navy Harrier force as a cost-saving measure. That would have deprived the Navy of fast-jet experience just as it was preparing to introduce the new carriers. The RAF lost the Harrier battle and they will stay in service, but Torpy, who has seen his planned Typhoon force cut from 232 to 123 and the new Nimrod fleet slashed from 22 to nine, has not given up. Last week, he told the Sunday Telegraph that rationalisation of the Armed Forces would inevitably result in the RAF controlling all Britain's combat jets.
"We have got to kill some sacred cows to make ourselves more efficient," he said – the sacred cow in question being the Fleet Air Arm, victor of the Falklands War.
Attacked on two fronts, the Navy has to justify itself as a long-term national investment – not easy when defence policy is effectively controlled by the Treasury, which insists on managing budgets from year to year. In a riposte to his fellow chiefs this month, Admiral Band accused them of "sea blindness" in failing to understand the importance of naval operations. Championing the new carriers, he said that, without them, Britain would sink to the status of second-rank naval power.
"We will always need some high-value, high-capability clubs in our golf bag, unless our ambition is only to play pitch and putt," he said.
But he has a problem: so much of what the Navy does is invisible. Be it anti-drugs patrols in the Caribbean, anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, mine clearance in the Persian Gulf or intelligence gathering by nuclear-powered attack submarines, naval operations rarely make the news. The Royal Marines, the Navy's infantry, have distinguished themselves in Afghanistan but when a television viewer sees a Marine he or she is likely to think Army. The contribution of Fleet Air Arm Harrier and helicopter pilots to the campaign is also rarely noted. If it flies it must be RAF.
When the Navy did make the headlines in March 2007 it was in the most humiliating circumstances. Fifteen Marines and sailors from the frigate Cornwall were captured by the Iranians while inspecting vessels in the Persian Gulf. Images of detainees smiling their way through captivity were compounded by the inexplicable decision to allow several to sell their stories. Nelsonian it was not.
But public relations are only a part of it. Why does Britain, which shed its global empire nearly a half a century ago, need a blue-water Navy? Why not a brown-water one, a vestigial coastal defence force? The answer lies in some figures.
The United Kingdom remains a crowded archipelago of 61 million people reliant on maritime traffic for its survival. Shipping carries 92 per cent of British trade, as compared to less than one per cent carried by air. Tanker traffic – oil, chemicals and liquefied natural gas (LNG) – accounts for nearly 40 per cent of total maritime trade movements. LNG is central to future energy needs, with imports expected to rise by half in three years. The British-owned merchant fleet may not be the colossus it once was but still weighs in at 20 million tons. The raw materials and finished goods on which the UK depends must use nine global choke points which are easily blocked, and the country is still enmeshed in a network of treaties and informal arrangements requiring a naval presence. There is also the nuclear deterrent, a naval responsibility for 40 years..
"All truly great powers are maritime powers," says Lee Willett, senior naval analyst at the Royal United Services Institute. "Navies allow you to operate when and where you want, over the horizon or as a visible presence helping to prevent conflict."
Yet the Royal Navy continues to fade. There were 413 warships and auxiliaries in 1964 and 224 in 1982. Today's figure is 101, including 16 patrol boats used to train university cadets. There are just 22 operational escorts, compared to a minimum requirement of 32 set out in the 1997 Strategic Defence Review, and just seven (soon to be six) nuclear attack submarines. Numbers of minehunters have been cut despite the risk of a terrorist mine attack on one of Britain's 600 ports or an Iranian mining campaign in the Gulf.
The need for adequate air defence of the fleet, learned painfully in the South Atlantic, has been forgotten. The Fleet Air Arm has had to surrender its capable Sea Harriers to save money, and the Harriers which fly from the two remaining small carriers, Illustrious and Ark Royal, are RAF ground attack types with no air-interception radar and no long-range air-to-air missiles. The Navy will not have an adequate interceptor until F35 enters service. Currently, the requirement is for 138 F35s for the RAF and RN but the aircraft is so expensive (more than the £65 million-a-piece Typhoon) that the government is not sure how many it can afford.
The Type 42 destroyer used to provide a second layer of air defence but only five of these very old ships (from the original 14 ) remain. They were supposed to be replaced by 12 Type 45 destroyers offering vastly-improved capability with the new Sea Viper missile, but the Type 45 programme is three-and-a-half years late and £1 billion over budget. Originally, 12 Type 45s were to be built but the number has been cut to six. For a little more money these costly ships could have been fitted with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, making them much more versatile, but the RAF blocked the idea because it threatened its deep-strike role. The RN's attack submarines carry Tomahawk but by next year there could be as few as six hunter-killers in service. Seven Astute-class subs are planned but the programme is also three-and-a-half years late and £1.2 billion over budget. The Navy needs a replacement for its 17 frigates but the successor Future Surface Combatant will not hit the water until 2019.
Fewer ships translate into more sea time for the RN's over-worked seamen and women. Numbers have fallen from 47,000 in 1997 to 35,000. The MoD wants all submarines to be based at Faslane and all destroyers and frigates at Portsmouth to save money. Sailors on escorts or submarines currently based at Plymouth must move their families, see them only at weekends even when not at sea, or quit.
In timeless Whitehall fashion, euphemisms pile up to mask the Navy's sorry state. Ships like Invincible are said to be in "extended readiness", meaning that they can be returned to service in an emergency. In practice, they would take too long to reactivate. There is also "capability holiday", a jolly term for the loss (supposedly temporary) of vital equipment and skills.
"The rather facile claim is made by ministers that the higher the capability of new ships, the fewer we need," says Lord Boyce. "That overlooks the obvious fact that if you have a ship off the west coast of Africa it isn't much use to you in the Persian Gulf, no matter how capable. The reduction in frigate and destroyer numbers means we fall very far short of what we need."
Admiral Band is equally blunt: "With the size of fleet, I can't go any more places. Turn the clock forward 20 years and we will be worrying about Asia and the west Pacific. If you cut the naval cake too far you just say, 'Okay, we won't go to the Far East.' Strategically, that would be incredibly stupid.''
As British seapower declines, so its place is taken by China, India, Russia, Brazil and others. The French navy is now arguably superior to its ancient rival.
"The UK is bucking the trend in reducing its naval power," says Mr Willett. "The Navy's case is always hard to make because its key attribute is prevention, and how do you prove a negative?
"You have the impossible situation in which evermore is required of ever less. There has been no strategic analysis of the situation facing the UK for more than a decade. The focus on Afghanistan risks strategic paralysis. Can we say that solving Afghanistan will make all our problems go away? If the answer is no – and it is – then Afghanistan cannot be the centrepiece of our security strategy."
Lord Boyce adds: "The problem about becoming totally land-centric, as a result of Iraq and Afghanistan, is that we focus only on today's war and not tomorrow's."
Critics of the carriers accuse the admirals of an old-fashioned, capital ship mentality.
"There is no compelling argument for spending as much as £12 billion on these two floating extravaganzas," says Andrew Brookes, aerospace analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Their only use is in expeditionary warfare and I cannot see a British Prime Minister embarking on such a war for a generation, given what we have gone through in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The RN can always shelter under the protection of the mighty US Navy carrier battle-groups, says the anti-carrier faction. But what about another Falklands? A never-to-be-repeated case of a British fleet deploying beyond the range of land-based air cover without US support, comes the answer.
In contrast, the Navy points to the flexibility of carriers as pieces of sovereign territory able to move 400 miles a day, provide support for land operations, act as an offshore deterrent to aggressors and take part in high-intensity naval war.
Contracts representing 90 per cent of construction costs of the carriers have been signed, which should ensure their survival. Whether there will be any aircraft to put on them or escorts to protect them is another matter.
As warship numbers decline, so does the infrastructure needed to build them. Unless a 'drumbeat' of orders is maintained, shipyards close and skilled workers move on. Warships take a decade or so to design and build, and cannot be conjured into existence when unforeseen events occur. As for America, she is expected to concentrate increasingly on the Pacific as Chinese power waxes, leaving Europe to fend for itself.
"If the Navy and RAF don't stop their squabbling and start living together the Treasury will ensure that they die together," warns the naval planning officer. "It is down to personalities. Glenn Torpy is a very divisive character."
"The general feeling is that there is no way back for the RN," says Steve Bush, editor of the magazine Warship World. "There has never been a case in recent memory when cuts have been reversed. Once numbers have been reduced the politicos say, 'you've managed, why do you need more?'"
"The Services have become the victim of their own can-do attitude," says Lord Boyce. "Whatever the resources, we find a way of winning."
Maybe not for much longer. Admiral Band sums it up thus: "The importance of the sea to the UK will never change and our freedom to use the seas will remain vital in protecting our national interests. Only a balanced maritime force, which contains both the 'big stick' of the carrier to deter conflict and escorts to support it, can protect that freedom".
