A 'courageous' decision Minister...

Monday 23 October was Defence Questions in the House of Commons. Ministers lined up to take a verbal onslaught of questions about current defence issues, including shipbuilding, European security and, of course, the current situation regarding HMS ALBION & BULWARK.

Throughout the entire session, all the Ministers refused to give a clear answer on the situation with the two ships. They did not rule out scrapping them, highlighted that there were other capabilities present and suggested that no decision had yet been taken on the fate of the ships. What then is going on?

Why Not Rule It Out?

It makes sense for Ministers to not rule out a specific commitment as part of an ongoing review in the House. Firstly, to emphatically rule something out, even if it is only a hypothetical option means you have constrained the work of the review team – not just in its quest for savings, but also in understanding what it is that UK national security objectives need to be.

The review work being done by the Cabinet Office is going to be looking at all UK defence and security objectives, with a view to setting priorities based on affordability and reflecting changes to national circumstances. The decision to retain an LPD capability assumes the review continues to find a requirement for the capabilities that LPDs bring (namely the ability to command, control and direct an amphibious landing using landing craft and aviation assets).

The second issue is that as the various force packages are built, different savings measures are put together (e.g. delete LPD, delete Lynx Wildcat, delete Challenger 2 etc) to look at how the MOD could put together an affordable force that would meet the priorities of the review. It sounds like these options have not been put to Ministers formally yet, and so to openly rule out doing something would significantly constrain the ability to pull these packages together. It also wouldn’t remove the need to deliver substantial in year, and long term savings either.

The RN is making a case, both internally and via selective leaking to the wider world is that the scale of the financial challenge it faces means wholesale capability must go in order to meet the savings targets. It is also clear that the RN is making the case that the way to achieve this which causes least pain to the two biggest priorities (CASD and Carrier Enabled Power Projection) is to delete the highest level of amphibious warfare capability. This would save significant amounts of cash, free up manpower and have wider knock on implications for procurement and operations.

This does not mean that the RN WANTS to give up this capability or platforms. Humphrey has never met a Minister, Senior Officer, Civil Servant or Military Officer who welcomes the loss of capability. It means the RN is trying to show that if the Government wants to commit to the Deterrent and Carrier while not properly funding Defence, the only way the RN can afford to do this is by scrapping other things.

If Ministers ruled options out, before formally being presented to them, then they run the risk of being open to special pleading, and in disrupting the reviews findings. The outcome may do more damage to Defence than if they didn’t intervene. For instance, if the Review found that the new role of HM Forces was to be ‘fortress UK’ then keeping the LPD would not only be costly white elephants, but would mean savings would have to be found elsewhere to keep them. Ruling something out in the House doesn’t make the saving problem go away, it merely transfers it onto other equally high priority, but far lower profile, capabilities.

There is a risk that in ruling out something emphatically, the need to find cuts will instead lead to huge pain across Defence as ‘salami slicing’ continues. This would arguably be more damaging as it would lead to the illusion of capability, not honesty in stopping doing something.

To that end, to not rule something out in the House makes sense – Ministers will decide when they see the full picture of proposals, what they mean for force posture and what they mean for savings measures. Until that is fully known, costed and understood, it does make sense to keep everything on the table and in play.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Any Ship can be an LPD – Once…

What was telling in the many replies by Ministers yesterday was not only the refusal to discuss the fate of the two LPDs, instead trying to turn to clearly well spun replies about 2017 being ‘the Year of the Navy’ (which is an increasingly unfortunate strapline, given that if this is the year of the Navy, Humphrey would hate to see a bad year).

There was reassurance in the House that beyond the two LPDs, the RN continues to have significant amphibious capability in the form of the three ‘Bay’ class LSD(A). To Humphrey, this is one of those statements which while technically accurate, is accurate in the way that you could say ‘any ship can be a Minesweeper – once’.  To say the UK possesses three Bay class able to be used for amphibious work assumes all of them are used in that role now. Sadly this is not the case.

One Bay class is permanently based in the Gulf, where it plays a critical role acting as the support ship for the RN MCMV force in region. This involves embarking an MCMV command staff, providing logistics and repair facilities in place of RFA DILIGENCE, and acting as ‘mother’ for ships to come alongside for life support when required. While HMS JUFAIR will provide excellent local support, the MCMV force requires an afloat support base to sustain it at distance from home.

Speak to any MCMV veteran and they’ll be clear that there is only a finite amount of time their ship can stay at sea. Small ships are just not designed for weeks on end – they haven’t the life support facilities to do this. They are also very, very, slow indeed and the Gulf is a very big place. The RN MCMV force plays a critical role in providing contingent capability to respond to mining incidents that could threaten two of the worlds biggest choke points – the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab-al-Mendab.

Both areas are a significant distance from Bahrain, and also some distance from friendly shore bases. To ensure that any clearance operations can continue, access to a support platform is vital. More importantly still, the RFA BAY class in the Gulf is also regarded by the US Navy as a vital tool in supporting their own MCMV work (the RN and USN work in an utterly integrated manner here). Removing that capability would do real and serious damage to UK, US and coalition interests.

What this means is the BAY class in the Gulf is a brilliant ship, and an excellent force enabler. What she is not, at present, is an effective amphibious warfare platform. She is weeks, if not months, sail from the UK, her crew are not versed in amphibious operations because they’ve not practised it due to doing other jobs, and there are no easily usable ports nearby for her to embark vehicles and troops as part of an amphibious task group.  By the time you could get her to the crisis, worked up, loaded properly and ready to go, the crisis is likely to be over.

More widely the two remaining Bay class are used often very sparingly in the genuinely amphibious role. Serious manpower shortages means that some RFA ships are alongside for sustained periods of time, either in refit or ‘reserve’.  There is no guarantee that come a crisis there will be the RFA manpower to man and deliver both the remaining ships to support an operation, nor that they will be available. Increasingly use is made of the BAYS in wider roles, so that they are often at some distance from home – such as RFA MOUNTS BAY in the West Indies, or support to the task to rebuild harbours in the South Atlantic. This is all vital work, but it is not working as part of an Amphibious Task Group.

It is hard therefore to take seriously the claim that the UK can rely on having three Bay class for amphibious work. They are vital ships for the RFA and wider UK goals, but they are not really used as amphibious platforms anymore.

The Death of the Amphibious Task Group

The fundamental problem facing the RN is that it is running out of ships worked up to do the large scale operation required to do major amphibious assaults now. HMS OCEAN goes next year, and the UK contingent LPH capability will be held by one of the QEC class, presumably along with the C2 function as well.

The splitting off of the BAYS to different roles means it is some years since a fully formed RN amphibious Task Group deployed (the COUGAR series of deployments were probably the last occasion). When BULWARK deployed last year, she was operating as much in a maritime security role as she was in the littoral delivering amphibious operations.

The challenge for the RN is to justify why it continues to need this specialist shipping for these roles, when the chances of the UK delivering an amphibious assault are slender. No one doubts the capability the platform offers, nor that they are outstanding ships. But, what is it that the RN wants to use them for and why?

Playing Devils Advocate, the circumstances when you need to command and control an amphibious assault (vice just moving kit about into friendly ports) is limited. While much of the doctrine may refer to raids, or surprise, in the modern environment are politicians really keen on dumping a few hundred Royal Marines and their vehicles ashore? Would providing a large LPH in the form of a QE Carrier, kitted out with multiple helicopters and air assets and C2 facilities, be as effective as having an LPD?

Politicians and the public are increasingly reluctant for large scale interventions. Short ‘boys own’ raids are the sort of thing that gets good publicity. Bogged down troops dying on the beach in the manner of Private Ryan are not. In this, are LPDs really the answer, or does the RN recognise that perhaps the solution is to use the Royal Marines for specialist maritime security roles, and maintain a limited ‘kick the door in’ capability through QEC, supported by a small amount of heavy lifting BAY class, theoretically held at readiness to support some operations.

There is no right answer to this, and it depends on what the review outcomes are. But it is noteworthy that Ministers are taking political flak now over it, so the hits have already come and damage absorbed. The media and public are being warmed up for the inevitable decision, so it is likely to be much less damaging should it be taken than a surprise announcement of something else going – particularly the closure of a base in a vulnerable constituency.

A cynic would argue that leaking the threat to these ships has backfired – Ministers have taken the damage, and have little to lose by scrapping the ships. They have already made clear that any decision will be taken ‘on military advice’ so this gives a sense of the lines they will fall back on come the inevitable Parliamentary or media questions.

It is unlikely that any further clarity will emerge for some time, but in the short term expert further pressure on Ministers to rule out specific cuts, and a steadfast refusal to do so. What this means for the RM and the future of the LPD force is not certain, but it seems likely that the chances of retaining both ships is now more slim than ever.