Tuesday 24 April 2012

'The QE class carrier debacle is clouding real maritime security issues'

With the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier and F-35 decision grabbing all the headlines, the rest of the Royal Navy's fleet is being left to 'wither on the vine', argues maritime consultant and former Royal Navy officer David Mugridge

It is hard to imagine a defence procurement project more inept in construct and scandalously administered than the MoD's current handling of Britain's new aircraft carriers. The almost daily headlines about cost over-runs, in-service delays and ridiculous ever-changing equipment decisions are over-shadowing more important defence and security issues like the erosion of effective national maritime security.

For over a decade the Royal Navy has staked its future on the operational employment of these carriers. It has decimated other hard-won capabilities like amphibious warfare in the process and now finds "flat-top nirvana" still as elusive as ever because cost over-runs and the need for last minute design changes make these platforms unaffordable to a cash-strapped Britain. As important as the carrier debate is, I would argue the rest of the fleet is withering on the vine because of it. By the time these sacred cows are operational and equipped with a viable air group there will be so little left of the Royal Navy to support the type of operations envisaged by Admirals and politicians alike, Britain's already compromised maritime security will be lost.

Because of today's media-fest, we hear nothing of the "battle royal" within Whitehall, which is raging over the Type 26; a modest future escort which trades traditional war-fighting capabilities to moderate its platform cost. The loss of the Royal Navy's once world-renowned amphibious capability is lucky if it grabs an inch of headlines as both sides of the carrier debate trade headlines in the hopes of carrying the ill-informed media day. Astute and Daring have both proved at best limited operational successes, while their platform costs contributed greatly to the financial haemorrhage that was the Strategic Defence and Security Review of 2010.

Even though we continue to sit on the UN Security Council and rely upon Italian national debt to keep us in the G8, the diplomatic future of the UK is not encouraging. We all now accept Great Britain and today's Royal Navy no longer rule the waves but too few realise our growing weakness in defence and, in particular, maritime defence costs and will cost this nation dearly. For many decades we have been a country of diplomatic influence and clout; a transatlantic power broker, who when words failed was not afraid to use force to intervene around the world. From the South Atlantic, West Africa, the Middle East to the mountains of Central Asia we have possessed a Royal Navy which could respond effectively across the full spectrum of defence and diplomatic missions. That hard-won ability and focused, operational excellence has been squandered on the altar of CVF, and for what? At best a hollow platform we cannot afford to operate effectively for a perfidious Royal Air Force which continues to out-manoeuvre the Naval Staff at every turn on the issue of carrier based air power or for a vulnerable platform which we cannot defend without additional escorts from other countries.

Power projection without a robust landing force is an empty threat. Shock and Awe did not win the Iraq war. In its wake it left a bloody counter-insurgency campaign which the coalition lost. One operational carrier can only achieve so much defence diplomacy or regional engagement. Only having one operational carrier means you have to be incredibly risk-averse in its employment or be prepared to create a political storm of epic proportions if it is lost to enemy action. The CVF decision was wrong in 1998 and, because of Whitehall incompetence and Portsmouth ego, continues to distort the recovery of Britain's armed forces in the wake of SDSR. Enough of trading ill-conceived tabloid headlines, can we please sort out the future Royal Navy and Britain's maritime security needs with some careful consideration and realistic planning? After all, those who threaten our national maritime security will not be countered by a single show-boat on exercise in the Wash, but they will be by a gunboat, deployed to their back yard, and some fighting spirit.

No comments:

Post a Comment