Assessment on the proposals for a Scottish Defence Force (Part 1)

The Scottish Government has put forward its proposed plans for independence, and the way Scotland would be governed in the event of it becoming an independent country. At the heart of these plans were details on the future structure of a Scottish Defence Force (SDF), and how it would be structured.

Humphrey has long had a close personal interest in this debate and has watched the arguments in favour and against with interest. He is genuinely neutral on the outcome of the referendum, believing that the final decision is a matter for the voters concerned, although he retains a keen interest in the proposed structure of any proposed SDF.  

The Think Defence website has helpfully summarised the findings of the paper on Defence matters, and it is well worth a read (the link can be found HERE). In summary though, over the 10 years after independence (2016-2026) the plan is to grow an SDF of some 15000 regular and 5000 reserve personnel operating on an at independence budget of some £2.5 billion per year. Having reviewed the paper though, the author has significant and serious concerns about the issues that were not raised, and wants to try and highlight them here over a series of short articles. The first part will focus on the SDF Navy, then the next part on the Air Force, and then finally some wider conclusions.

At a most basic level, the paper appears to fall foul of what can be described as the ‘fantasy fleet’ syndrome so often found on the internet. In other words, people have taken an order of battle, hived of a reasonable sounding level of equipment and assumed that this would make a good defence force. That’s a great theory, but in reality its likely to be far more complicated than this.

For starters, the British Armed Forces are the product of hundreds of years of evolution, procurement and support. They operate a closely integrated set of equipment, underpinned by a well developed training network, and supported by a very complex set of support contracts to ensure availability. Due to the numbers and amounts of equipment in service, costs can be calculated using economies of scale, and planned workflow, in a way that smaller sized support cannot.

A nascent SDF would find itself operating a truly eclectic collection of units which are not necessarily the most appropriate for its situation. For instance, the proposal that the Navy takes on two Type 23 frigates seems a little odd. The Type 23 is one of the worlds most advanced anti-submarine warfare escorts, and designed to be a submarine killer par excellence. To use it to best effect requires a well trained crew, who have a range of extremely specialised skills. Assuming that no one is forced at independence to join the SDF, the challenge will be recruiting and retaining a core of niche skills to actually employ the vessel in her intended manner. This includes the engineers, weapon systems maintainers, the warfare department and those with the skills and experience at all ranks and rates to use the vessel in its intended manner.

The Type 23 has a crew of 185 people, and a very rough rule of thumb is that for every person at sea on a ship, you need at least two at home in other roles to ensure support and training can be carried out. This means that the SDF will need to have around 1100 sailors in the system just to keep their two Type 23s available for sea. The table below shows the current crew totals for the proposed fleet, plus the shore contingency required to actually keep a fleet operational. It should be noted that in the RN, the entire figure for the surface navy is roughly 15000 personnel to support some 70 warships.

Class	Complement	Total required	Fleet total
Type 23 (x2)	185	370	1110
Sandown MCMV (x4)	34	136	408
Bay Class LSD (x1)	70 RFA	70	70
River Class OPV  (x2)	30	601	180
		636	1768

Even if they have the bodies there is no guarantee that they will have the right skills to do the job. It’s a harsh reality that Scotland does not currently house any RN school, such as HMS SULTAN or COLLINGWOOD. At independence the SDF would find themselves without any training establishments worthy of the name. While building a basic recruit training facility may be easy (if expensive), the cost to build something like the Maritime Warfare Centre in COLLINGWOOD, or the engineering facilities at SULTAN. This means that from the outset the SDF is going to be reliant on either building a new and very expensive shore infrastructure to train and develop its personnel, or be reliant on the Royal Navy for assistance. The other issue is whether the RN would willingly expose what would be foreign nationals to all parts of the capability of the system they inherit. One must assume that on transfer to Scotland, the vessels would have their capabilities ‘dumbed down’ to ensure they do not come with the same capability as their RN equivalent (particularly in electronic warfare and other matters). The result is that the SDF would operate vessels on its own, and would probably find the RN unwilling to train them to full effect on the systems UK Eyes only capabilities.

The problem with relying on the Royal Navy is that with Scotland now a foreign country, their personnel would almost certainly be charged the full rate for access to training establishments, which quickly racks up into millions of pounds. The RN training pipeline is in high demand from nations across the world, and there is no certainty at all that the RN would place good relations with the SDF over many other navies, and no certainty that places could be found for the SDF sailors. In other words, at independence, the SDF has no means of training its next generation of sailors in anything from initial naval training, through to  how to support and fight their ship.

Similarly, the issue of maintenance will be a complex one. There are no T23s based in Scotland, which means that a great deal of money will be spent creating a permanent support facility for the class in Scotland. In these circumstances the SDF will need to negotiate and establish support contracts, similar to the ones used by the RN, and pay to put in place the complex web of support arrangements in order to keep the vessels available for service. In a small procurement and support budget, it is hard to see where the money will come from for this sort of activity.

The sheer running costs of the vessels will also be a challenge – on average it costs about £20 million per year (source THEY WORK FOR YOU) to keep a Type 23 at sea, and about £3 million for MCMVs and patrol craft.  To keep the Scottish Navy afloat, you are looking at an annual running cost of around £60 million – before you consider salary costs of the crew and the shore support infrastructure to go with it. On a relatively small budget of £2.5 billion, it is easy to see how much of a cost it would be just to keep the ships at sea, let alone deploy them.

The upgrade of ships like the Type 23s or the MCMVs is going to be a challenge. Both classes are currently undergoing complicated and expensive updates to keep them at the cutting edge of technology. Is the SDF prepared to buy into this upgrade process, accepting that it will struggle to train the personnel to use it for best effect, or does it want to instead use older hulls, but accept the challenges of managing an aging weapons stockpile which could be highly expensive to support over time?

Even the most basic issues, like where the Tugs and support ships come from will be a problem. Its often forgotten that the Royal Navy doesn’t actually own any tugs nowadays, and that they are instead provided by Serco Denholm under contract. These are not for the SDF to inherit, so even basic issues like who provides the berthing, sullage and in port services that a modern Navy requires needs to be answered. The widescale privatisation of defence support across the UK means that the SDF as a whole will not inherit a single armed force. Rather it will need to do a lot of negotiations with companies to provide services previously paid for by the UK government – one suspects this could have a large impact on the budget in the first few years.

The final question is what does one do with a navy like this? The lack of proper training facilities, the likely difficulty in recruiting and retaining specialist crews, and the huge costs of putting in place support arrangements. All this seems to indicate that this would be a Navy either trying to operate kit than it cannot use or maintain, or being so hobbled by debt early in life to establish itself that it will never use the equipment it gets.

An initial look at the laydown of the SDF would suggest that from a maritime perspective, there will not be enough people, not enough money for running the fleet properly and also a major conflict between short term investment in hulls, or long term investment in high end training. The figure of 2000 people is far too low to support a Navy of this capability, and one feels that there will not be enough money either – particularly when other running costs are taken into account.

In the next in this short series, Humphrey will focus on the Air Force, and then finally consider some wider issues which do not seem to have been considered in the round.