"And you'll never fight alone..." or why the RN doesn't need to replace Harpoon yet...

In an evidence session in front of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, the National Security Advisor, Sir Mark Sedwill recently attracted the ire of some commentators when he noted that the UK did not plan to operationally deploy the new carriers without allies being present.

To some this seemed a scandalous situation, the once mighty Royal Navy humiliated and unable to deploy without some awful foreign types coming along to hold their hand and protect them. It seemed to sum up the ongoing state of UK defence, that the UK just couldn’t cut the mustard anymore.

Sir Mark was merely restating a fundamental tenant of UK defence & security policy, that has been the cornerstone of planning for decades. This being that the UK does not plan to go to war on its own, or without support from allies. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who follows UK defence policy – it has been clearly restated on numerous occasions.

To some though, the suggestion that the UK ‘can’t go it alone’ is simply not good enough. There was a healthy debate on social media about why the UK was failing in defence, and the only possible solution to remain credible in the eyes of others is to fund defence to the point where the UK can go to war alone. Anything else merely demonstrates our weaknesses as a nation apparently…

The truth is that in the modern 21^st Century, very few nations will want to go to war unilaterally with another country without any third parties or allies being involved. The days of independent armaments production, short supply chains and no reliance on foreign equipment vanished decades ago – almost all nations are interdependent on others for military capability. Similarly, they are interdependent on others for aid, trade and diplomatic support – very few nations can pull up the drawbridge and act without some form of support from others.

There is a splendid myth like aura around the notion of fighting alone – backs to the wall and operating with no one else to help. The reality is though that the UK hasn’t done this sort of thing in centuries. By alone, Humphrey means ‘the islands consisting of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. In the 19^th Century, the UK may have fought in isolation as a colonial power, but it did so relying on the many nations, territories, dominions and colonies that made up the British Empire, the worlds predominant superpower comprising roughly 25% of the globe – hardly ‘alone’.

In 1940 when the UK in popular mythology ‘stood alone’, it did no such thing. Many different nations stood alongside the UK in the fight against fascism.

Similarly, the 1966 Defence White Paper that cancelled the CVA01 carrier recognised that the UK would not operate alone (it noted that why would the UK help provide airpower to an ally who wouldn't provide local basing). Other than the very isolated case of the Falklands in 1982 comprising two nations fighting alone (which even then saw the UK reliant on other nations for equipment, support and diplomatic assistance), it is hard to spot a time since 1945 when the UK operated except with allies of some form.

The harsh truth is that the UK has not planned to operate in isolation in decades, and that saying so should not be a cause for public flagellation for speaking this truth, but public relief that the UK has sufficient common sense to not seek a fight with its neighbours on its own. Only in the UK is it possible for a distinguished public servant to be criticised, and for a period of national self-doubt to commence over an eminently sensible restating of policy that has been the case, tacit or otherwise, for centuries.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

While the Royal Navy will undoubtedly deploy the QUEEN ELIZABETH class globally with a purely UK task group in a national capacity, operating under national rules of engagement and a national C2 chain on occasions, it will still be dependent on other nations for support. The much vaunted RFA will need access to friendly ports to pull in and restock with munitions, fuel and supplies (despite some people out there assuming RFA’s have holds the size of the TARDIS, they do still need to store ship occasionally). It will be necessary to pull into ports for maintenance (such as the Mid Deployment Stand-down Period), and it will be important for the RAF to have access to local airfields to fly out spare parts, personnel and supplies as required.

All of this leaves a footprint on the ground that needs allied support. It needs defence attaches, diplomats and effective membership of alliances to open doors, facilitate support and ensure that a ship can be deployed and operate. It also means that the QUEEN ELIZABETH, like every other ship, is going to be reliant on allies even in peacetime, just to stay at sea. It is utterly impossible for the UK (or any other nation) to keep a carrier group on station, operationally, without relying on external support.

Similarly, the statement that the QEC will deploy with allies operationally should be welcomed, not criticised. It doesn’t mean that the RN can’t defend her – far from it, it means that the UK has a sufficiently robust and effective defence relationship with other nations that we feel we can integrate their ships into protecting and operating alongside our own.

Joint operations are not something where ships can just steam alongside each other and happily fight off hordes of incoming dive bombers or enemy combatants. Operating truly jointly requires training, shared communications, doctrine and command and control – and an implicit trust that if you put a foreign vessel into your carrier battlegroup, there is a robust enough link to ensure that this ship will provide sufficient information to enhance the maritime and air picture, that it can receive data from your ships, and that it is able to in a crisis engage and defeat incoming threats (and also not shoot down your own aircraft by mistake).

This means not only having the technical ability to shoot down a missile, but also the political will at home in both capitals to allow both nations to operate jointly together, and also trust that in a crisis the foreign vessel will be operating under a rule of engagement set that permits them to engage the enemy – not sit back and watch as your own ships come under fire.

Consequently, operating in a truly integrated carrier battle group, not just turning up with an allied ship and steaming together, requires huge amounts of work and effort to deliver properly. It is one of the many unsung benefits of both NATO and EU defence co-operation that see these nations able to work together properly. It is possible to see Danish ships deployed in a US carrier group, or French ships deployed in a UK one – because everyone has confidence that they can work together properly.

The benefits of knowing that not only are you ready to fight tonight, but that you are ready to fight with your mates at your side too is that it helps you make informed decisions about what to prioritise for funding, particularly when budgets are tight. 

For the Royal Navy some of the hardest discussions in recent years has been about the funding of a replacement for the Harpoon missile, an increasingly elderly anti-ship missile in service in various forms for about 30 years with the RN. Internal funding constraints have seen the Royal Navy (not Ministers, not Civil Servants and not the pesky other Services) choose to use its internally delegated budgetary priorities to put funding elsewhere, and not on a new class of ‘heavy’ anti-ship missile. The Harpoon will leave service at some point in the next couple of years, and instead be replaced probably in the last 2020s or early 2030s. To some this is a disaster, a sign that the RN is once again failing as an organisation. ‘What credible Navy, they argue, is not in the business of funding a heavy anti-ship missile’?

Harpoon as a missile is elderly, and if you speak to many PWO’s is of fairly limited value in the locations where we are likely as a nation to engage in maritime operations. It had significant merits in the days of defeating Soviet battlegroups steaming into the Atlantic, but in the modern crowded littoral environment, where surface targets intermingle with third party vessels, and where it is entirely possible for a shooting war to be going on while others continue their lives (see for instance the conflict in Yemen and the occasional pot shots taken at shipping in the Bab-Al-Mendab straits), it is hard to see Harpoon being of much value.

Politicians are increasingly risk averse, and will not be keen to see operations conducted that result in civilians being killed. Firing a Harpoon missile to sink a Bongozwanaian frigate may be a course of action, but if it results in the sinking of an oil tanker with ensuing environmental damage, or a cruise liner with hundreds killed, then the UK is politically isolated and the war is likely lost. Consider the ongoing furore by some over the entirely appropriate and justified sinking of the ARA BELGRANO nearly 40 years ago, and then ask what manner of political whirlwind will occur if a Royal Navy ship sank or catastrophically damaged a cruise liner using Harpoon?

Consequently, the circumstances where anti-ship weapons are likely to be employed will require far great positive ID of the target, and far greater certainty that it will hit the right ship. Hence an increasing move to shorter range more modern weapons, often air launched that will provide more assurance that the right ship will be hit.

What does this mean for the RN? For starters knowing that you’re going to be operating in a coalition means knowing that there will be shared ROE, and shared responsibilities. Any UK carrier group is likely to have multiple US vessels alongside (particularly if USMC F35 are embarked) which between them carry a plethora of modern Anti-Ship capability. Far easier to let the US (or others) take the shot and let the UK focus on delivering airpower and ASW or other priorities.

More cynically perhaps, but given the manner that in the recent strikes on Syria saw an enormous amount of ‘willy measuring’ by social media commentators over the number of missiles fired, it is inevitable that the RN would be lambasted for ‘only’ firing 4/8 missiles on a target compared to the US effort…

 It is extraordinarily difficult to envisage circumstances where the Royal Navy would be operating alone, in isolation in a shooting war that required it to have the ability to fire ‘heavy’ anti-ship missiles. Yet despite this, people on social media and beyond keep claiming that the RN is somehow not ‘credible’ because it is potentially going to gap a capability that falls heavily into the ‘nice to have, but don’t need to have as others can bring it to the party’ list, in order to spend money the RN hasn’t got to counter a threat in a scenario that doesn’t seem to exist.

It’s the same logic that demands that random missile programmes be purchased as ‘bolt on’ to upgrade ships capabilities to replace Harpoon, ignoring the many technical reasons why this may not work. A ship is not an inanimate object that can be treated like a lego brick. Installing a new missile system is actually a really complicated piece of work – it means taking a design that may be decades old, probably at its upper margins for growth and capacity and working out how to put new missiles on.

This isn’t just a case of ‘replumbing’ on the upper deck – it means looking at the systems required to operate the missile – are they compatible with the RN combat system architecture? Can the ship ‘talk’ to the missile if it needs to fire it, or would a refit be needed to upgrade the system (adding more cost and complexity). What manner of changes need to be made to the wiring, electrical systems and other associated ‘life support’ parts of the ship to ensure that the missile can be shipped, operated and fired properly.

It could be that many of the missile designs under consideration would simply place too much pressure on existing ships, or they could require significant ‘under the bonnet’ work to rearrange compartments, wiring, pipes and other essential equipment to ensure the missiles can be maintained and fired as required. All of this comes at a large cost – it means modifying ships, which in turn means they need additional time in maintenance and refit – potentially quite serious work. Given the pressures on the surface fleet, this adds cost and time on, which makes it harder to generate ships for sea without experiencing delays. Is all this cost worth it for a bespoke ‘off the shelf purchase’ for an interim system, particularly on older ships that may be going out of service shortly?

The decision that planners face is whether to spend time and money putting significant change into a design like the Type 23 to install a new missile that may not be the right solution, or do they wait until a better design like the Harpoon replacement enters wider USN service and align with this one? If the RN went for the MM40 Exocet (for example), it would find itself spending years refitting ships to get missiles ready for use, and then wouldn’t have the funds to purchase a truly next generation weapon.

The question is not one of ‘credibility’ but about the best use of scarce funds to deal with the threats we as a nation face right now. If the cost is taking ships offline for extended periods of time for the refit, losing the likely opportunity to get a next generation missile in service soon and spending money that has to come from sacrificing other more urgently needed capabilities, all to retain a theoretical capability to lob a missile somewhere, then is this really worth it? Our allies are there, let us rely on them for this part of the burden sharing while we offer the Carrier and the command platforms to sort the operation out.

Some will argue that the UK looks pitiful compared to other nations, like the Scandinavian states that choose to fit many of their ships with anti-ship capability. To that charge, Humphrey would argue that it is less about capability and more about deterrence factor. Many states out there with conventional militaries want to send a clear message of deterrence – namely that to mess with that state will involve inflicting a considerable amount of pain and cost on an aggressor.

For the Scandinavian states, faced with an aggressive neighbour in the form of Russia, their posture is arguably about telegraphing an intent to inflict a bloody nose on any attack. It will not have been forgotten that during the 1940 German invasion of Norway, coastal defences inflicted a heavy price on the German navy. This message continues, with an extensive network of coastal defences (albeit some mothballed) and anti-ship capability telling Russia and other nations that to attack will come at a huge cost. To these nations, anti-ship missiles are less about actually sinking ships, but more about functioning as a conventional version of the nuclear deterrent – namely a means to inflict an unacceptable level of damage on an aggressor nation.

By contrast the UK does not need anti-ship missiles to send the same message – aggressor states will be aware of the nuclear deterrent, and the plethora of other equally relevant capabilities such as SSN’s and shorter ranger anti-ship missiles in the RN’s arsenal. They will know that to launch an unprovoked attack on a nuclear power, and member of NATO and the UN carries real risk and potentially unacceptable punishment.  For the RN, anti-ship guided missiles are less about deterrence and more about operational effect. While it would be nice to keep them as a ‘nice to have’ they arguably are of far less relevance and importance to the RN than many other navies, because of the way that the UK plans to operate in the future.

The problem facing defence planners in the UK is trying to explain to the public at large that the idea of the UK operating alone without allies is so sufficiently unlikely as to not warrant any real planning. It was interesting listening to a talk about the V-Force to hear former RAF pilots openly state that they had properly integrated NATO ‘strike plans’ but the UK only plans were barely developed or seen as a credible option. The idea that the UK needs to fund a capability to go it alone at the conventional level of warfare seems foolish at best.

Until though the public understand that the UK hasn’t truly fought alone for centuries, the debate will remain stuck in a place where people can only see the worst-case scenario and perceive the UK as a failure for not funding capabilities it doesn’t necessarily need in order to fight a war that it has never seen a need to plan to fight. Hardly the best use of scarce public money…