Thin Pinstriped Line

In recent weeks there have been a growing number of reports about territorial disputes between various nations in South East Asia, including Japan, Korea, the Philippines and China. These disputes seem to be marked by common features, namely the use of maritime assets in near conflict to push the case for a nations sovereignty over a particular island group or Archipelago. There has been plenty of film footage shot of warships, coastguard vessels and even protest groups publicly coming close to blows to pursue various nations territorial claims. The purpose of this short article is consider whether there are any emerging lessons for the wider maritime environment coming out from these disputes. Humphreys view is that they have highlighted a number of points worth remembering.   The Vessel is the Nation, the Nation is the Vessel. One message emerging clearly from the disputes is that to many nations, using naval vessels (or coastguard / paramilitary vessels) is a means of...

The MOD used the start of a Bank Holiday weekend to quietly slip out the news that the competition to replace Ursula Brennan had been concluded. The new PUS will be the current finance director, Jon Thompson. This was always going to be a fascinating competition – there is arguably a dearth   of talent at the senior 3* gusting 4* level right now. The author has spoken to a lot of friends and acquaintances and their opinion of the current home-grown MOD talent pool is that there are some superb people in the system, many of whom have the potential to be excellent PUS material within the next couple of years. Right now though, it feels as if the department is still coming to the end of its ‘lean years’, marked by the appointment of Ursula Brennan, due to the lack of anyone else allegedly wanting to take on the job. Humphrey has no idea who else was in the running for the post. There is some suggestion from a commentator here that Bernard Grey put his name forward, but beyond ...

It’s been an interesting few weeks for the MOD, with a multitude of announcements, media coverage and developments occurring, all of which seem to be linked.   In this article, Humphrey wants to try and bring together many of the smaller stories that have cropped up, and see whether there is any common theme here. First up is the news this week of major changes to the MOD ‘Head Office’ (sometimes known as Main Building or the MOD) structure, which will significantly change the way that the MOD does business. This was reported in the media as being a bonfire of the generals, with 25% fewer 1* posts in future. While the media revelled in this, what was missed was the more interesting ‘so what’. These changes owe their roots to the Levene Review, and the efforts to reduce the top level administration of the armed forces. Since this was published, the MOD has spent a lot of time working out an entirely new business structure, and this is the latest piece of the puzzle. What ...

  A small example of how announcements can be made repeatedly, and also how cuts are not really cuts was seen today in the Mail on Sunday. The paper ran a long article citing claims that the MOD is about to cut 25% of its senior (e.g. 2* and above) officers, in both the Military and Civil Service. The original story can be found HERE . The story leads on the concept that all three 4* Commander in Chief roles (CINCLAND, CINCFLEET and CINCAIR) plus the CINCNAVHOME role, will be scrapped as part of plans to streamline the top level of the military. In reality these announcements are not anything new – anyone who has read the Levene Review which came out in 2011 saw this as a major recommendation of the review. It suggested that the role of CINCs was probably unnecessary in the modern era of better command and control. At its most basic, a CINC existed to exercise control over all forces in their area, in the absence of ability for home commands to work in a similar manner. This...

Well the sun is beating down (somewhere!), and the vast majority of the population are enjoying their well deserved summer leave. Humphrey is working on, taking his leave later in the year in order to go mountain climbing in an obscure part of the world, and taking a vow of spending two weeks without saying ‘that seems a politically very brave decision Minister’… In the interim, he wanted to provide a short update about the blog as a whole, to give an idea of what lies ahead. Having discovered the site statistics section on the control panel, it gives all manner of useful information about what articles are read, and where readers interests lie. At present many of the most widely read articles are on naval matters, backed up by information on wider governmental issues. The site was established in order to try and provide a source of ‘rebuttal’ and explain in context why the MOD does things, and why what is being criticised in the media often makes more sense when the full pictu...

This article was born out of suggestions elsewhere on this site about the feasibility of the UK deciding to order an additional pair of Type 45 destroyers to bolster the Royal Navy’s (RN) escort fleet. The purpose of this article is to try to explain the financial context when they were cancelled, and also consider some of the challenges involved in trying to complete two new T45s now. From the outset, let’s be extremely clear. This article is not saying that the UK could not build two more Type 45s – if the will is there, and the budget exists to do so, then anything is possible. As will be seen though, the challenge is trying to do so in a manner which makes rational sense. Background As many readers will recall, the T45 programme originally had its roots in the NATO standard Frigate, then Horizon project of the 1980s and 1990s. Following UK withdrawal from this project, the T45 emerged as a national design, albeit similar in some ways to the Franco / Italian vessels....

The MOD announced last week that HMS DARING has returned from her maiden deployment to the Middle East. This highly successful trip allowed the RN to deploy her via the Med, through Suez, and then conduct operations with the US and other coalition partners in the Arabian Gulf. She then conducted wider operations, including a trip to India to demonstrate the vessel to the Indian Navy. The deployment is good news for several reasons. Firstly, it marks the return of a UK high end AAW capability in the Gulf region. The UK hasn’t sent T42s up in to that area for several years, so it is a significant enhancement to both UK capabilities, and also regional security that the DARING was able to deploy there. It will have been seen as a clear sign by allied nations in the region that the UK is prepared to deploy its most potent military equipment in support of the region. The deployment provided an excellent chance for the RN to demonstrate to the USN, and other premier naval powers, j...