The Russians Are Coming (Yet Again)

Russian transits of the Channel are becoming like groundhog day. A small group of usually elderly ships, sometimes accompanied by a rescue tug steams up the channel on their way home. The Royal Navy sends out an appropriate vessel to politely steam in company with them and then carries on once they leave our area of interest. Sometimes this is a frigate, other times an OPV and occasionally an MCMV. Finally, social media and the press erupt in FURY as they decide that the UK has somehow been humiliated and its all someone else’s fault, and the usual crowd of rent-a-quote retired Admirals are wheeled out to say, ‘it wouldn’t have happened in my day’.

The latest example is that of the transit of a small group comprising an oiler, a landing ship and an AGI (intelligence collector) which sailed through Channel waters last week. Given that these ships old, slow and posed a negligible military threat to these islands, the RN decided to send one of its hugely capable River class Offshore Patrol Vessels to conduct a patrol offshore and escort them. In this case HMS MERSEY spent approximately 72hrs in their company before parting ways. Yet according to the Telegraph there were ‘serious questions to answer’ about the circumstances.

Escorting Russians through the Channel is a very routine part of operations for the RN – they’ve done it thousands, probably tens of thousands of times over the years. The only time it went wrong is in 1904 when a Russian force on its way to the Far East attacked a group of trawlers off the Dogger Bank, mistaking them for Japanese gunboats and killing three fishermen. Other than that tragic incident, they’ve generally behaved themselves.

These transits will get an appropriate level of response to the threat posed – when a major task group sails near the UK, such as one led by the KUZNETZOV, then the UK tends to send out larger shadow forces to monitor the situation. When you get an utterly routine group of ships, then they tend to send an OPV or another vessel.

On the transit in question, the RN had plenty of ships at sea in the Channel that day, including a number of frigates. But escort ship programmes are very tightly driven in order to meet challenging deadlines and goals, such as working up to get to sea to relieve another ship on time, or to deploy operationally. Taking 3 days out of that schedule to slowly sail up the Channel at 10kts is not the optimal use of a several hundred-million-pound warship, and actually damages its ability to deploy operationally.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There is a Fleet Ready Escort, which is a Type 23 or 45 permanently at high readiness for sea and operations in all respects. But activating this means that at some point she’ll need to come back alongside and conduct stores and maintenance. Sending ships to sea is also expensive, consuming fuel, supplies and activating payment of various allowances that push up salary costs for sailors (and over time some of these cumulative allowances become extremely expensive to pay). In an age where the MOD is cutting mobile phone use and car hire to pay for DREADNOUGHT, every penny counts. Does it make financial sense or operational sense to deploy a frigate, with the 180 people onboard to sit in the Channel for 3 days doing nothing more challenging than keeping station and offering to call the AA in the event of a Russian breakdown. Its like sending a Ferrari to monitor a street cleaning vehicle around your local neighbourhood – fun, but frustratingly pointless.

By contrast the River class OPV is the ideal platform to conduct this sort of task, able to stay at sea in excess of 300 days per year and conduct a variety of discrete operations, often in very unpleasant weather conditions. There is perhaps a little bit of snobbery by some observers about OPVs, with people perhaps remembering the very old Ton class boats doing fishery protection or the Island class in the 1980s. Wonderful vessels, but old, primitive and often very small and slow.

The modern River class is a significantly more capable type of ship, with greater range, speed and capability than their predecessors and they have a flight deck.  The Batch 2, the first of which HMS FORTH is about to arrive at Portsmouth, with another four under construction, is even more capable, resembling in dimensions and capability a Cold War frigate, such as the Type 14 or Type 81 rather than a simple patrol vessel.

This comment may come as a surprise to some, but if you look at the level of capability that many of the RN frigates had in the 1960s, it was arguably relatively limited. The Type 14 were designed as a 2nd rate ASW frigate, but quickly moved onto essentially OPV and fishery duties. Armed with 3 x 40mm guns from WW2 and a pair of Limbo mortars (think WW2 depth charge thrower), they had limited capabilities and were apparently poor seakeepers. These vessels though were classed as frigates, despite being smaller, the same length and with the same range as the Batch 2 River class OPVs. No one would suggest a River class is the same capability as a Leander or Type 21, but it is worth noting that they present a level of capability in excess of what the RN considered to be a 'frigate'.

For the RN, these ships are the perfect means to conduct routine escort operations. They have a ‘third watch’ crew system which means they can stay at sea longer than a frigate on often very routine patrols. The ability of CLYDE and the Batch 2’s to embark a helicopter helps give them additional flexibility, and they can handle any of the myriad of maritime security tasks that would be encountered in UK waters, and which a Frigate would add little extra military capability for (e.g. escorting, fishery inspections, border patrols etc). These ships are brilliant at what they do, and that is why HMS MERSEY was the right ship for the job.

There has been some suggestion online that somehow these ships are not able to defend themselves, and that this makes them useless. It is often forgotten that 99.9% of a warships life (often 100%) is spent not fighting. There is a myriad of complex tasks that need to be done, which necessitate a warship, but do not need full on warfighting in high end conflict capability. This is where OPV’s, particularly the River class, are so valuable – able to do the bulk of the maritime tapestry work at a fraction of the cost of a Frigate.

There were some comments on social media that these ships are underarmed, and require a 76mm gun to make them more ‘credible’. It is hard to understand why this would make sense as a requirement. If you look at the need for surface gunnery, the RN will use its weapons either for high end naval gunfire support (firing on land), or potentially anti-surface ship action (such as in the Falklands where a Type 21 sank an Argentine tanker). At the lower calibre end, these 30mm weapons could be used for deterrence (firing warning or disabling shots), responding to fast moving close in threats and also general support.

Adding a 76mm gun on what is intended to be a cheap platform does not provide an equally cheap uplift in capability. You must buy the mounts, refit the ships (eating into their available margin of space for upgrades), probably alter the internal design that doesn’t have space for a 76mm gunbay and magazines, which in turn would necessitate a major costly refit, taking her out of service for a long period of time. You’d have to create a cadre of ratings to operate and maintain the gun, meaning new training courses and procedures, and it would put more pressure on an already stretched manpower plot to get suitably qualified people in the right positions to do this. In other words, you’re spending a lot of time and money to fit a 76mm gun, without a clear idea of what it is you’ll be doing with it.

This is before you consider that these ships lack the sophisticated combat management systems larger Frigates and Destroyers have, so their ability to make maximum use of the system will be reduced. It encourages dangerous thinking too – that by fitting a slightly larger ‘proper gun’ you have a got a ‘proper ship’ to go in harms way, and then task them accordingly. If an OPV found itself operating in a war zone as part of a Task Group, something has gone very, very badly wrong. These are not vessels designed to fight in high end conflicts, nor to conduct surface gunnery actions with hostile warships. Accordingly, it is very hard to see what operational benefit is derived from this sort of ‘upgrade’. It is also ironic that many people who champion this sort of idea of spending huge sums of money to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, are often the same ones who moan about MOD wasting money.

There is a wider consideration too in that you don’t always want a frigate to be on hand to escort ships. The fact that a Russian intelligence collection vessel was in the force implies that it had the means to conduct collection operations by a variety of means. Is it necessarily sensible or appropriate to put a hugely complex escort ship, which relies on use of the electronic wavelength to do its business, actively alongside a Russian ship probably designed to scour these wavelengths for usable information? Sometimes simpler is better.

The final observation is that Russia does disinformation very well, and this sort of relentless negativity about RN capability plays into their hands brilliantly. By constantly worrying in the press that the UK is not able to send a specific capability to sea, despite this not being the case, it  helps undermine public confidence in the armed forces and their ability to keep the UK safe. If you were a hostile power, keen to maintain an information advantage over your potential foes, then regularly sailing elderly ships through the channel in an effort to cause a period of national self-doubt over the state of the Royal Navy, despite there being no need for such doubt is a brilliant way to achieve an easy propaganda victory. The sort of media coverage and social media commentary seen here is gifting an information operations win to Russia, a nation that excels at such sort of activity, without them actually having to do anything themselves beyond sail a ship. 

This latest incident is another reminder of the growing challenges of conducting military operations in the 21^st century. The RN sent the right ship to conduct the right mission in order to let other RN ships focus on their own jobs. Yet in the eyes of ill informed spectators and others seeking to make capital, this story has become an opportunity to denigrate and embarrass the Royal Navy, rather than listen to the very good reasons why it has not in any way failed. The lack of an offensive counter media strategy, pointing out why an OPV is absolutely the right ship for the job is notable here. This is yet another instance where the Royal Navy has done the job it is meant to do and still people think it has failed. What an utterly depressing place to be.