Go To Sea Once More - Type 23 Sea Days and why the RN excels at getting ships to sea

Research completed for a Parliamentary Question has revealed the number of days spent at sea per year since 2010 for the entire Type 23 fleet (HERE). This question, seemingly designed to make entire legions of former staff officers and civil servants shudder with horror at the research effort required to answer it, reveals that since 2010 the entire Type 23 force has spent a total of 32.5yrs at sea (or assuming crew of 185) roughly 2.2 million man-days).

This works out that each Type 23 has spent roughly 28.5% of its time at sea annually – although this will vary considerably depending on what the vessel was doing (e.g. operations or deep refit). It is perhaps easy to look at these figures and ask whether seeing hugely expensive ships spend less than a third of their time at sea represents value for money, and whether more can be done to better utilise them. Doubtless some journalists will seize on these figures as ‘proof’ of defence cuts, without asking what they mean.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There are several factors to consider in all this that are worth thinking about in more depth. Firstly, the phrase ‘days spent at sea’ is probably not the question you want to ask when considering the ships usage. It ignores the question of where the ship was when it wasn’t at sea.

Royal Navy ships work a variety of different routines depending on their programme, their readiness state and what the Navy intends to do with the ship. Over a two – three year cycle a ship will emerge from a dockyard refit and conduct post refit trials that will mean varying amounts of time at sea. They will then work up the crew and shape them into a group of people able to work as a team to operate the ship safely at sea and over time become ready to fight the ship.

At times like this the ship will go to sea to conduct highly specific training and tests and ensure it is able to work effectively. This sort of evolution may see a ship go to sea for a week, sailing on a Monday morning then coming alongside on a Friday afternoon. For example, Humphrey has been at sea on a Friday morning off Devonport, watching multiple ships heading for the dockyard in order to secure for the weekend.

As the ships company gain in experience and confidence, they will start to undertake more demanding work – for example taking part in the FOST process which will lead to longer periods of time away, but still often alongside at weekends (albeit working hard). There will be the odd port visit, prior to usually finding themselves in pre-deployment training before eventually sailing for a 6-9-month deployment.

During this period the ship will make multiple port stops and also have, on a 9-month trip, a four week stand down period in a friendly port where the crew take two weeks leave. The ship will not usually leave port during this period, and instead conduct essential repair and refit work.

On their return to the UK there may be a period alongside for leave, or if the ship is due a major refit then she may move to very low readiness in order to destore and prepare to be updated. This means the crew will be at a minimum – for example HMS PORTLAND and DARING post their deployments in 2017 went into extremely low readiness. A ship in deep refit too will not go to sea at all for, hopefully, obvious reasons.

Why this matters is that in a normal cycle ships companies will spend a considerable amount of time being very busy, working very hard and not actually putting to sea. This doesn’t mean they aren’t doing anything, its just that their programme doesn’t call for them to spend weeks away from home.

It may come as a surprise to some to learn that the Royal Navy is like many other employers in that it tries to often work a five day week. Many ships will sail on a Monday and come back Friday so that those crew not on duty can get to spend time with their families and go home on the weekend. This is a sensible measure because too much time away from home can quickly become a major retention issue if people aren’t getting much needed down time.

Smaller vessels also carry finite stores and stowage space, and regularly need to pull into port to ‘ditch gash’, restore and conduct some tasks that are more easily done in harbour than at sea. Just because a ship can go to sea doesn’t mean it has to go to sea.

For ships on deployment, time alongside does not mean that the ship is not of value. In addition to offering valuable opportunities for storing ship and granting the crew some down time, hopefully with a decent run ashore too, time in foreign ports is a vital part of defending the UK’s national interests.

Ships represent a vital influencing tool and when in harbour will often play host to a variety of visitors, from helping local school children or dignitaries tour the ship to learn about the Royal Navy, through to hosting VIP visits by local senior officers or military organisations. The ship can play host to official talks, or provide an opportunity for the UK defence industry to showcase their equipment and demonstrate it working on an RN vessel, thus helping play a part in supporting British industry.

During major arms exhibitions, you will often see RN vessels committed to supporting the UK contingent and providing a major source of support and influence. Don’t under estimate how much goodwill can be generated for UK interests by a well timed ‘pipe the side’ and an excellent lunch in the Wardroom of a British frigate for a local dignitary. These sorts of visits often unlock long term benefits for the FCO, Trade and wider national interests that would otherwise have been unfulfilled.

The presence of an RN warship in a foreign harbour is a very potent ‘soft power’ weapon in the arsenal – it should not be assumed that just because a ship isn’t at sea, she isn’t delivering immense value to the taxpayer.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

What is the metric that matters?

Days spent at sea is an incredibly misleading metric because it doesn’t focus on what the bigger picture is – namely what task is the RN trying to deliver and how is it doing this. The Type 23 frigate force is intended to meet a number of military tasks and deployments, many of which need year round sustainment.

For instance, one role is the ‘Fleet Ready Escort’ – essentially to be the ship on the Fleet Commanders speed dial to ring up at 0900 on Christmas Eve to say ‘by the way Chaps, the Russians are sending a ship through the channel tomorrow and have sent you an RPC  – happy Christmas’…

This role is critical to national security goals and the RN invests considerable time in ensuring that a suitable vessel is always available as needed to meet the task.

To meet this task means programming multiple ships in a complex pattern of refits, maintenance periods, training periods and leave periods to ensure that at all times a suitably worked up ship is available to do the job. The people drawing this plot up will have to balance this task with also meeting several other tasks at the same time, which will include ensuring ships are available for the Gulf, providing support to the Deterrent and longer-term deployments such as going out to Asia like HMS SUTHERLAND has done this year.

All of this information has to be collated together, considered and mapped out to produce a picture that shows where every single ship in the RN’s escort force is up to right now and what it will be doing for some time to come. Balancing these commitments out, ensuring the task now gets done and that ships are brought out of refit on time to work up to deploy in 9 months time is a real challenge. Personally, Humphrey regards the people working in Fleet Operations, Commitments and Planning as genuine unsung heroes whose hard work goes a very long way to ensuring that the RN can meet the operational tasks placed on it.

When considering all of this, it perhaps helps make sense of why RN ships may seem to spend quite a lot of time seemingly not at sea. There is a plethora of very good operational reasons why a ship cannot just sail around for 365 days per year, and nor should they. Ships are complex machines requiring regular maintenance, updates and husbandry – no navy in the world can heavily sweat its force to see large chunks of it spending a lot of time at sea without compromising on maintenance and crew rest.

The RN also must consider the longer-term picture of maintaining the material state of the Type 23 force for the long term. There is no doubt that these ships are getting a lot older, designed for an 18-year lifespan, the first (HMS NORFOLK) entered service almost 30 years ago, and the last will not leave service until the mid-2030s.

This means that as they age, they will require more time in maintenance as systems require updating or refitting. There will be increased numbers of defects to rectify as sub systems cause problems and the fatigue on the hull increases. These ships will need to be carefully managed to ensure that they remain available for tasking until the last one pays off – and it is possible that some of the last people to form the crew of the final in service RN Type 23 have probably not yet been born.

People are probably the most vital component in all of this equation - without them a ship cannot go to sea. One of the major challenges the RN faces is getting enough people of the right Rank/Rate and at the right level of training and experience to go to sea. HMS RALEIGH may be churning out lots of junior sailors, but this doesn’t equate into an immediate solution to the shortage of more senior ratings.

When programming a ship time alongside is absolutely vital. As noted, people need time at weekends to ensure they can have ‘down’ time with family and friends. They need to be able to take a reasonable amount of leave during the main leave seasons (Easter, Summer and Christmas) and when deployed get time off during the trip too to relax.

The RN asks a great deal of its people, who work exceptionally hard and it is essential that where possible they get time to rest and recover – without it they quickly burn out and leave, causing a long term retention problem. In turn this causes manpower shortages throughout the system that require difficult measures to alleviate, and in order to meet the Task, can often cause lasting resentment from people the RN needs to keep in the system.

It is critical then to look at stories, particularly during the summer and Christmas season when RN ships are pictured alongside ‘en masse’ in their baseports and ask why this is happening. Is it the case that Defence Cuts are biting, and that ships should instead be out in the seas sailing about, or is it the case that the RN is pragmatically trying to ensure its people get the space to take leave ahead of a busy year?

Last Christmas there was considerable negative coverage that no RN vessels were deployed outside of home waters. Yet within days RN ships sailed globally, marking the start of a year that has seen the UK deploy warships in every ocean on the planet.

This sort of global presence, second only to the US Navy, could not have been achieved without having people showing enormous commitment and dedication. The call on their time is substantial (as noted, literally millions of man days of effort goes into keeping the Fleet able to go to sea over a several year period) and this should not be forgotten.

When looking at these statistics, or reading stories about ‘days at sea imply defence cuts’ ask yourself whether the better question is ‘has the RN failed to meet the tasks placed upon it with the resources it has’? If the answer is ‘no’ then arguably tactical level details about whether HMS NONSUCH spent 40 or 50 days at sea last year make very little difference to the fact that the UK possesses a world class navy, operating globally 24/7/365 and meeting the demands placed on it by a grateful nation.