What You Need to Know: The Royal Navy, once the pride of Britain’s global dominance, faces a significant decline in capability and relevance. British Defence Minister John Healey announced impending retirements of key ships and equipment, including the amphibious assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark and the frigate HMS Northumberland.
-Even the Royal Navy's prized aircraft carriers are under scrutiny, with calls to mothball one of them. War games reveal the carriers’ vulnerability, raising questions about their utility in modern warfare dominated by advanced missile technology.
-Despite proponents' claims, the Royal Navy’s current state highlights the tension between tradition and the realities of 21st-century military threats.
"Rule, Britannia!, Britannia, rule the waves," is the famous line from James Thomson's 1740 poem, which was later set to music by Thomas Arne. Yet, today it is hardly close to the truth. Britannia doesn't rule the waves, and the Royal Navy is in a sorry state.
It could get worse.
This week, British Defence Minister John Healey warned that over the next five years, the service should expect to see a number of its ships retired, along with helicopters and even older unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
"These will not be the last difficult decisions I will have to make," Healey told parliament on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
The final two amphibious assault ships – HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark – are now on the chopping block, along with the Type 23 frigate HMS Northumberland. All of the vessels will be retired by next spring.
There have even been calls to mothball one of the UK's two carriers.
This decline comes despite the previous government's "Global Britain" initiative, which included sending the flagship aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth on a multi-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific – the first in decades. The senior service's other carrier HMS Prince of Wales is now scheduled to sail to the Indo-Pacific next year leading a UK Carrier Strike Group (UKCSG) on a show-the-flag-mission.
However, there have been warnings that if HMS Prince of Wales were to deploy to the region in wartime, its fate might not be any better than the last warship to bear the name. It was in December 1941 that the King George V-class battleship was sent to bolster British forces in Singapore, only to be sunk by Japanese aircraft days after arriving. It wasn't the finest hour for the Royal Navy.
Earlier this week, The Times reported that in recent war games carried out by the British military, its carriers were quickly sunk – nearly every time.
"In most war games, the carriers get sunk," a source familiar with the games told the paper of record, and added that the flattops were "particularly vulnerable to missiles."
Multiple tests were run – with most of the details remaining classified – but in a number of scenarios the UK's expensive carriers ended up at the bottom of the ocean. It puts into question whether those calls to mothball the flattops aren't such a bad idea.
Even the suggestion that the age of the carrier is over is one that many proponents of the warships don't want to hear. We don't need to be reminded that aircraft carriers head to sea with carrier strike groups (CSG) that include guided-missile destroyers and cruisers that provide a defensive screen from submarines and aerial threats including missiles. However, the tactics of protecting a carrier were devised decades ago.
Meanwhile, missile technology has greatly improved, as have torpedoes, drones, and other potential threats.
China's newest missiles have greater range and improved accuracy – and while the oceans are a big place, carriers can't exactly hide in an era where Beijing has satellites and is developing "over the horizon" radars.
It too should be noted that China hasn't just developed carrier-killer missiles, it has built multiple carriers – with a third set to enter service next year, and a fourth believed to be in the early stages of construction.
Lord Alan William John West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord told The Times that he believed that only after nuclear-powered submarines; aircraft carriers remained the "least vulnerable military assets," and he said the warships maintain the ability to move "vast distances."
Today's carriers also have advanced technologies that can include the ability to emit false electronic transmissions, making the floating airbases harder to spot on radar.
"This is one of the most significant things we give to NATO," Lord West, a combat veteran of the Falklands War, told The Times. "If carriers are so useless, why are the Chinese, Americans and Indians desperately building up their carrier forces?"
There is no simple response, but military officials aren't always known for being forward thinkers.
Military historians might point out that cavalry was still employed at the beginning of the First World War, even as the nations of Europe had adopted the machine gun. The major combatants simply didn't believe (or didn't want to believe) that the day of horse-mounted troopers was over, but cavalry charges quickly ended on the Western Front as the armies dug in! Likewise, navies continued to operate battleships even as the carrier had emerged as the dominant warship.
It should be added, a Royal Navy spokeswoman also told the UK paper "Our carriers are among the very best in the world and are protected by the latest cutting-edge defence systems and capabilities."
But weren't the same things said about King George V-class battleship HMS Prince of Wales went it was ordered to steam to the Pacific?
Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.
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