The More Things Change, The More Familiar They Become...

The newly appointed Secretary of State for Defence, Penny Mordaunt MP has delivered her first keynote speech about her Department and her vision for it. Sometimes these speeches say little and reveal even less, covering routine lines to take but not much in the way of really substantive thought-provoking debate. By contrast this speech was a genuinely revealing insight into the challenges facing Defence and the bright future ahead for the Royal Navy.

The Sir Henry Leach memorial lecture is a timely opportunity to allow senior leaders to put across a vision in keeping with an Admiral who, perhaps more than any other leader in the post war Navy put forward a vision of leadership and change throughout his career. Although perhaps best remembered for his leadership during the Falklands War, his whole career was one of leadership of change. From helping deliver the Sea Slug missile into service, ushering in major changes to the way the fleet planned to fight, to delivering major changes to how the Royal Navy functioned operationally, particularly the 1981 Nott review, Admiral Leach embodied the role of a truly great senior officer.

HMS DRAGON- Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

It is fitting then that this lecture served as the basis for a remarkably open and candid discussion by the new Secretary of State about the role of the Royal Navy, its carrier force and the deeper policy discussions about the exciting opportunities and changes ahead.

The speech reviewed the commitments of the Royal Navy globally over the last 12 months, a telling reminder of the global focus and vision of a naval service which remains operationally deployed across the globe. Although the numbers have changed, the global vision and the capability have not – the Royal Navy of today operates across the same number of oceans as the Navy led by Admiral Leach.

The challenges it faces too are remarkably similar to his time as First Sea Lord, facing off striking a balance between the North Atlantic and a more global presence. In 1981 the challenge was to revamp an ageing force built for global deployments, albeit with a modern core focused for the North Atlantic and develop a force capable of operating against the most modern Soviet submarines and safeguard the sea-lanes.

The Royal Navy of 2019 faces similar challenges, having reoriented itself into a predominantly globally facing navy, it now finds itself torn between having to balance off meeting the needs of a global Britain, and deploying across the planet on a regular basis, with that of providing enough vessels to meet the growing Russian submarine threat and safeguard the sea-lanes.

The policy debates are also eerily similar too, from the focus over what to do with amphibious shipping to whether to invest in cheap and cheerful or complex and capable vessels (such as then the early Type 23 and the planned but cancelled Type 43&44 destroyers) as well as the amount of resource that Trident should take from the Naval budget.

In both cases the RN was expected to operate in a resource generous but constrained environment, where it was well funded, but faced with many competing priorities that were equally expensive to choose from.

The questions posed in the speech sought to address these issues in more detail. For instance, it was candidly noted the real difficulties faced in translating policy aspiration into practical outcomes. The contrasts between the 1998, 2010 and 2015 SDSR were laid bare – three different defence reviews in 17 years all offering similar visions of security policy, but with very different ambition when it came to the level of resource available to meet them.

The speech also asked difficult questions about the disconnect between policy goals and short term decisions. A good example of this would be the decision to build 12 Type 45 destroyers, reduced to eight in the 1998 SDR, then cut to six as a result of a planning round decision to make the books balance in the mid 2000s. In other words to meet a short term financial goal, a long term operational goal to deliver strategic effect got sacrificed. In an era of a small number of destroyers, this loss of ships may have had a positive impact on solving an in year financial woe, but the long term ramifications will take years to work through the system as the loss of hulls reduces operational availability and increases pressure on the six that were built.

Wider tough questions were asked about mothballing ships and running on elderly vessels at a time when new ones seemed delayed. While no answers were forthcoming, the sense was clear that something needs to change. The system needs to approach things from a radically different perspective and look again at how it delivers operational capability.

This tough message was underlined by a message on ship construction, talking about how ships need to be built at home to generate long term sound structures not just in the shipyards, but also the wider supply chain too.

It is often forgotten how many UK companies benefit from the impact of warship construction, and it is worth a read of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Shipbuilding report into the naval sector which issued recently. In this report, it lists just a fraction of the UK companies benefitting from the Type 26 project and the work that they get. A good reminder that the long-term opportunities if a drumbeat of construction can be achieved will trickle throughout the system.

These comments have been interpreted as a sign that the new RFA support ships, desperately required to replace the existing and very elderly FORT class vessels will be built in the UK and not abroad. But this also highlights a real challenge facing planners – as the SofS noted in her speech, the MOD has shown that project costs and procurement costs grow rapidly.

The requirement is for three hulls, but if the costs rise, or the bids to build in the UK are significantly more expensive than to build overseas, what happens if the choice is between two hulls built in a UK yard, or three in a foreign yard? Is the decision to be made on purely operational grounds, in which case there is clear requirement for three hulls, or on wider policy grounds that will seek to protect UK shipbuilding as a whole, in which case should the operational needs of the Royal Navy be impacted in order to protect British workers jobs?

There is no easy or right answer to this question, but it captures the real dilemma facing planners in the MOD. They must deliver operational capability, but they also have to balance this off against longer term goals too. What is more important for the nation as a whole? Too often the default answer on internet chatrooms is ‘buy all three in the UK’ without answering the follow up question of ‘where is the money coming from to do this and what do you want to scrap/defer/delay to pay for it’?

The Secretary of State made clear her view that more money was required for Defence to resolve its issues. The speech served as a very clear shot across the bows to the Treasury for the Spending Review, and perhaps an insight into how the MOD is hoping to solve its multi-billion-pound funding deficit in the Equipment Programme.

Industry may also welcome the call for more coherent planning and delivery of capability, but will it welcome the call for increased exportability of its equipment? It is easy to call for UK companies to export warships overseas, but this is not always as easy as it is made out to be.

The modern warship export market seems to be breaking down into two key sectors – cheap and simple vessels such as OPVs, larger frigate class vessels. To build the former is something that can easily be done locally, or very cheaply by nations such as China. The difficulty for the UK in breaking into this market is offering a design that is cheap enough to undercut the Chinese and their very generous subsidies or dealing with nations that can already build the design in their yards anyway.

Larger frigate programmes are increasingly a national prestige project, designed to upskill a national capability. Relatively few countries are in the market for complex high-end frigates that are not in some way built at home. The Type 26 export wins are a great victory for the UK, but they will be built abroad in their home nations and not here.

Trying to find a nation in the market for a complex warship programme that will carry the label ‘operated by the Royal Navy’ and that they wish to see built in UK yards and not their own is going to be challenging. It probably doesn’t exist in the way it did in previous decades, and the challenge is to find the niche where the UK offer makes most sense.

It is easy to bemoan the lack of export orders for UK yards, but in an environment where the French and Spanish yards have had significant success with their vessels, and where the Chinese and Russians are operating in the ‘cheap and cheerful’ market, where does the UK position itself and why?

To be compelling the UK company needs to offer a viable product coupled with a sense that investing will secure the support of the British Government and potentially generate tangible longer-term military co-operation and other opportunities. Why else would you buy a frigate from the UK if you didn’t plan to work with them in the medium term? This poses an interesting conundrum for defence planners – do you send ships to operate where there is a need for them, or do you deploy them to places that may buy our offering instead?

Looking out to the next 10-15 years and the opportunities seem to be built around trying to get more nations to buy into Type 26 and potentially finding nations willing to bolt onto the Type 31e project. But the Type 31e is probably the sort of vessel that is the right size and level of capability for a growing navy to build in its own yards, and not contract overseas. It has to be realistically asked whether the future for UK shipbuilding is more on supporting the UK base and then providing a world beating logistics and support capability, or cling to a ‘famine/feast’ approach such as it has done in the past. Right now, with no warships under construction in UK yards for foreign nations, the question must be – will there ever be another warship built in the UK a foreign nation?

One more cheery aspect is the news that the Royal Navy is determined to ensure it constantly has one carrier at very high readiness at all times. In practical terms this is a significant change from prior review plans, which suggested there would only be one active carrier at any one time.

This is not just an announcement about carriers though, but also an insight into the way that the Navy will do business differently in future. As the RN transitions into being a force optimised for delivering carrier strike capability and being a force built around deploying a carrier, this implies that there will be several support units and Royal Marine and Naval Air Squadrons required to also stay at high readiness too.

In practical terms this suggests significant changes to the pattern of RN deployments, moving away from the model of ships at sea on individual deployments, and instead seeing forces work up and drop back in readiness as required. This means that there may be more ships in home waters when the carrier is not deployed too – keeping the force coherent and on similar readiness and availability will be key if the conventional deterrent is to be credible.

What this means is that the future operating model of the Navy seems likely to change substantially over the next few years. As the Type 31 and Batch 2 River class come online, they will almost certainly carry the lions share of defence engagement and duties that used to be done by a deploying DDG/FFG. The Type 23/26 and 45 force will almost certainly be held in the UK, to work either in the North Atlantic or to operate as part of the carrier’s escort group.

This means a substantially different feel to how the RN works to today, with a tripwire of lower capability vessels spread across the globe representing the UK daily in routine defence engagement, while a core of high readiness and high end warfighting units remain in the UK, skulking ominously in the manner of the Grand Fleet, ready to deploy as required to send a message.

By the late 2020s the Royal Navy will resemble a force that in operational concept is likely to be extremely familiar to the late Admiral Leach. But this force will not be one of the Cold War models, but instead a force resembling the Royal Navy of before World War Two.

Admiral Leach joined the RN in 1937, at a time when the RN was deployed globally, predominantly relying on relatively light forces or longer-range escorts to ‘fly the flag’ globally through a series of stations and bases including the West Indies, South Atlantic and beyond. The heavy punch of the fleet was held in the Med and Home Waters to face any credible threat. The vision of the force was global in nature and prepared to go where the threat lay. In the Far East, the great fortress of Singapore remained the theoretical home to surge capability too should the Far East require it. Underpinning this was the support of the Dominions and their own Royal Navies.

The Royal Navy of the mid 2020s will also be deployed globally, with light forces and longer-range escorts permanently based in the Med and the Middle East and, if public hints are to be believed, in Singapore and elsewhere too. The core of the fleet, able to deliver a heavy punch to the enemy will be based in home waters but held at high readiness and able to sail if required to the Med or beyond to tackle emerging threats as required. Naval bases remain in the Med, the South Atlantic, the Gulf and Singapore. The fleet will continue to operate alongside other Royal Navies, sharing similar equipment and operational experiences.

While the technology will be utterly different to that of 1937, it will remain a modern force able to fight a war with allies against peer level threats. It will remain a globally focused navy capable of operating under the most arduous of circumstances, and at its heart, it will remain a Navy that is operated by the most incredible men and women whose values, ethos and courage is indistinguishable from their predecessors of 90 years before.

Admiral Leach set the scene for taking decisions that have led the RN to become the force it is today. Many of the vessels in service now have their origins from the period when he led the Naval Service, and the most senior officers today learned their craft working directly for his generation.

The Royal Navy of today is an astonishingly capable and successful force, and it owes much its success and extremely bright future today to the work and efforts of individuals like Sir Henry Leach and his decades of service to the nation.