The Tyranny of Maritime Distance - the Royal Navy and the Gulf

The situation in the Gulf remains challenging following the illegal Iranian seizure of the British flagged tanker MV Stena Impero on Friday 19 July. There are suggestions that the UK has failed in this situation due to not sufficient ships, not sufficient coverage and a failure to expect an Iranian response. Is this criticism fair or is it unjust?

The first thing to recognise is that this situation is naturally frustrating – to see a UK flagged merchant vessel boarded in this manner and forced into the harbour of a foreign power with the Royal Navy seemingly powerless to stop it generates an extremely emotive response. It naturally feels unjust and humiliating. But could more have been done?

The Gulf is an extremely complex operating environment that plays home to multiple naval forces. All the local countries have some form of naval force, of varying levels of capability and complexity. The most potent regional power in the Gulf is probably Iran, due to its possession of a reasonably capable diesel submarine force.

Steaming in heavy waters- Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

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The United States maintains a presence built around the 5^th Fleet, a force which varies in size depending on the circumstances, but at its core is a major naval HQ and base in Bahrain, which houses a variety of smaller US vessels (e.g. MCMV forces). These are augmented on a reasonably regular basis by both Amphibious Ready Groups (such as the one led by USS BOXER) and Carrier Groups (such as the one led by USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN). These will chop in and out of theatre on a regular basis, providing additional ships and aircraft for both national and coalition tasking. On a typical day the US Navy presence can encompass about half a dozen escorts plus support ships and submarines.

Finally there are the wider foreign navies. The Gulf is a region of key strategic importance to many nations, and as such sees a reasonably regular drumbeat of visits from all manner of countries. It is an operating area that draws together European NATO members, China, Japan, Korea and Australasian partners in one single space. To that extent it is an environment that is a great place to test multi-national operations and build strong defence relationships.

The size of the foreign presence varies considerably. Back when piracy was a bigger deal than it is now, there was a considerable EU presence conducting counter piracy work in the Southern Red Sea and off the coast of Somalia. This included loose escort work for merchant ships, and trying to maintain maritime security in the region. As the situation improved, the number of EU warships in region has diminished, although the operation, known as ATALANTA continues.

There is a smaller international presence inside the Gulf, which can include deploying vessels coming in for a short period of time to conduct defence engagement, or to work in multi-national coalitions operations through the Combined Maritime Forces. This work varies in length and complexity. Some nations may send a ship to the Gulf for 6 months, while others may operate in the wider region on quite a long reach for a shorter period of time.

Finally a small number of nations maintain a permanent naval presence in the region. The French and Australians maintain a small ground footprint, to support vessels and other units entering the area. What this means is that there is no consistent force level inside the Gulf region, it can adapt on a daily basis depending on the wider regional security situation.  

The UK maintains the second largest permanent foreign presence in the region after the US – a force built around a frigate, 4 x MCMV, an RFA BAY class and usually an RFA Tanker too. This is supported by a permanent naval base and HQ in Bahrain, led by a Commodore and the UKMCC staff.

This force is large by regional standards and brings a high level of effectiveness in certain key areas. The MCMV force for instance provides niche capabilities that are in short supply, ensuring that were mines to pose a threat to navigation, it could help ensure the safety of merchant shipping if required. The BAY class is intended to support these ships and act as a ‘mothership’ for logistics and support, as an MCMV can only stay at sea for a few days before things get a bit uncomfortable.

The role of the frigate is to provide general support to maritime operations in the area including supporting exercises, taking part in coalition training, defence engagement and being ready for contingent tasks. This is augmented by a second vessel which can often come into the region on a more irregular cycle to support either planned maintenance or to provide additional capability when needed.

The first thing to take away is not to sit there and feel despondency that the RN ‘only’ has one frigate in the region. Other than the US, no other nation has warships permanently based in the Gulf region. To act as if the RN has failed for doing something that practically no one else can do is a uniquely British characteristic.

The harsh reality is that had the tanker had flown the flag of convenience of any other state, then it is likely that said country would not have had an escort anywhere near the Gulf on the day of the incident. The RN may ‘only’ have one vessel permanently based in the region, but that’s one more than most other navies. Perspective matters here.

The RN force in the Gulf has remained relatively static for decades in its structure and size. Back in the 80s it averaged 3-4 escorts supported by a tanker and store ship. Humphreys instinct is that the reason for this slightly larger force was to provide mutually complementary air defence capabilities in a time when RN vessels had more specialised roles (e.g. the so-called 42/22 combo) and needed to work together to deliver the effect. This period also saw a reliance on the use of Mombasa as the main support base, meaning a long passage off station, reducing the number of vessels in the Gulf.

By contrast more modern vessels not only have more effective and mutually complementary weapon systems (compare a Type 23 to an Exocet Leander for example), but they are also able to rely on facilities more locally for support (e.g. Bahrain).

The actual force numbers have remained remarkably constant for decades now – with an average of 1-2 escorts in the Gulf region on an enduring basis. The real change has been the move to a permanently based frigate in the region, rather than overlapping deployments, which has increased ship availability, but reduced the number of RN hulls transiting into, and out of, the region. The overall effect delivered is broadly similar but delivered in a different way.

Suggestions that defence cuts have left the RN without enough ships in the Gulf then are wide of the mark. The RN escort force in the region has been consistent in its size and capability for decades, regardless of wider defence cuts – the RN choosing to prioritise the region over other areas to ensure a continuous presence. Perhaps a bigger challenge than force size is the problem of distances for the force.

There have also been suggestions that other cuts may have reduced the ability to support the situation. For example at least one paper has noted the withdrawal of the Lynx Wildcat from Oman earlier this year. In reality the ‘Chobdar’ detachment was designed to provide a capability to support the Omani Government  (p37 refers) in countering smugglers and was not intended to provide any form of support to escorting UK shipping in this way.

Suggesting its removal reduced the safety of merchant ships is a bit like saying that your house in London got broken into because the coastguard in Wales had scrapped a helicopter. The two issues are not related, as the aircraft were not in the region to carry out on work to counter the Iranians in the Strait of Hormuz – they were present on utterly different tasks.

The Tyranny of Distance

The big challenge in all military operations is the ‘tyranny of distance’ – which could perhaps be summed up as saying that the world is a very large place and it can take an awfully long time to get where the crisis is – which can benefit an actor who instigates the crisis.

The sheer size of the area of interest is frankly difficult to comprehend. The US 5^th Fleet, and by extension the UKMCC is responsible for supporting maritime operations in an area encompassing roughly 2.5 million square miles of water. By contrast Western Europe is roughly 1.4 million square miles.

What this means is that there is a lot of water out there, not many merchant ships and even fewer warships. People perhaps don’t realise how empty vast swathes of the ocean are, or how enormous the area they cover is.

For all navies in the region the problem they face is trying to ensure presence where presence is needed, while also meeting wider goals and plans. For example, planning a mission for a ship to detach from the Gulf to sail to the west coast of India for an exercise, or down towards East Africa for counter piracy duties takes vessels off task for a considerable period of time.

It can be a 10 day sail each way to some of the more remote locations of the operating area, so sending a ship to participate in a two week exercise can remove it from the Gulf for a month. The problem all operational planners face is trying to balance off what to participate in in the region – do they stay close to likely sources of trouble near the Strait of Hormuz, or do they enhance defence relations and capability in the south (possibly benefitting long term capability building and defence sales), or do they go and do some counter piracy work off Somalia – but be away from other locations for several weeks?

All of these are options, but what they mean is that gaps emerge that can take time to fill. This isn’t a problem unique to the RN – every nation operating a warship in the 5^th Fleet AOR has to make the same difficult prioritisation – what matters most, and how is it delivered, and how to respond quickly if something goes wrong.

The problem is when distance is not on your side. In the case of Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is barely 20 miles wide, and it is extremely easy at short notice to rustle up a small force and move at speed in to board a vessel. Distance was on Iran’s side in this case because they needed far less time, and had to traverse shorter distances to act.

What we are seeing is the reality that having a warship in place makes little difference if it cannot get to the scene of the incident in time. In this case HMS MONTROSE was on station in the Strait, barely an hour away from the incident but by the time the alarm was raised, even at best speed she was unable to get there in time.

To some people this indicates total failure, but to Humphrey it is more nuanced than this. The RN was doing its job, it had a ship on station escorting UK vessels, but it was let down on the day by the reality of distance and time. Its not just the RN that wasn’t able to get there, no other coalition or Omani vessels (it being their territorial waters) were able to respond in time either.

There is an unfortunate reality that if you are intent on malevolent activity, and you can act in a very short timeframe, having every warship in your navy in the region makes no difference if they can’t get to the scene of the incident in time. Distance is the great leveller.

Why not convoy?

There are some who advocate that the RN should have opened fire to prevent the ship being seized, or that an RM boarding party should have been sent to recapture the ship. While plausible to those whose military experience is limited to playing Call of Duty, the reality is such an operation is extremely difficult to carry out, requires a lot of planning and if not done properly could result in a lot of people (both service and civilian) being killed for no good reason.

There were suggestions in social media that the UK should have implemented a mandatory ‘convoy’ system through the Strait of Hormuz to protect the merchant ships involved. Firstly, in a mildly pedantic note the phrase ‘convoy’ has extremely specific meanings and refers to moving ships in an organised fashion in a manner not practised by the RN or NATO since the late Cold War. The better phrase to use is escorting, and this is something that has been done in a variety of situations in the region – for example HMS DARING in the Southern Red Sea in 2016.

In a complex region the RN approach has been to offer advice and guidance to merchant ships and remind them of the risks (through the UK Maritime Trade Operations team). This small team provides timely advice to merchant mariners, and also understands what the potential vessels going in and out of the Gulf are, and what the likely UK interest in them may be (e.g UK owned, UK registered, UK crewed etc).

The challenge is that merchant ship owners may well not want to wait around at anchorage for an escort to move with them through the Strait. Every merchant ship is sailing on a tight timescale to make the next port and load/unload and then move on. Time spent swinging at anchor is time wasted and potentially future contracts lost.

To merchant ship operators, the risk/reward of the highly unlikely chance of an Iranian boarding versus the potential cost of a delayed arrival means the risk of transiting alone makes more sense than waiting and steaming in company with the slowest vessel present.

Such an attitude is not dissimilar to those of 1914 and 1939 – is it better to take risk individually or accept security but delay? It is also the case that the RN may not have known about every vessel in the region and the extent to which UK ships were transiting, meaning a delay would have occurred while finding out where the ship in trouble was, and the extent of the UK obligation to it.

Escorting makes sense when you are in waters where there is a clear threat to shipping that a warship can deal with – for instance in the 1980s with the Tanker Wars where the US protected tankers against Exocets, or in the Southern Red Sea where the Type 45 could provide a ‘shoot down’ capability against incoming threats targeting a merchant ship.

It is more complex in a situation like Hormuz where you have dozens of ships passing through the area, and where the Iranians can still come out after your escort has returned in the other direction. Time is on the Iranians side here, and there is a limit to what could be done short of escorting each ship like a limpet until she reaches harbour. As the RN found in 2007, the Iranians are very good at exploiting time to take advantage of a situation to their advantage.

There is a lot of anger at the perspective that a ship flying the Red Ensign has been failed by the Government which did not do enough to protect it. This is understandable because it feels so frustrating. But, while it will not solve the problem, we would do well to remember that in the last almost 75 years, the RN has consistently protected shipping across the globe. This sort of incident is exceptionally rare, but sadly does occasionally happen – not just to the UK but to all manner of nations.

To those who feel we have been humiliated, it is worth looking at the situation in reverse – the UK did just the same to Iran just a few weeks ago off Gibraltar, and again applied the advantage of distance and speed to seize a vessel. In a similar manner in May the US seized a North Korean vessel, while historically North Korea, and Iran has seized US vessels (USS PUEBLO and the Seals incident).

The debate now seems to focus on two areas – firstly what can be done to fix it, and secondly what sized fleet would prevent it happening again?

In the former issue, the clear solution must be peaceful in nature and non-escalatory – going to war over this is not an option. With this clearly ruled out, it is logical that whatever follows must be brought about by deft diplomatic action and negotiation with a combination of offered carrots and implied sticks to ensure both nations step back and cooler heads prevail.

This will be challenging against the backdrop of an increasingly aggressive Iran (for example shooting down of drones, planting of limpet mines and wider support for interest’s hostile to the West), and the growing tensions between the US and Iran over the nuclear deal.

In the medium term this seizure by Iran is likely to backfire as it has internationalised a bilateral dispute with the UK. By acting in a manner that poses a clear threat to shipping, and in increasing the risks to innocent passage, Iran has made it more likely that other nations will want to play an increased role in monitoring and if needs be escorting vessels in the region to protect them. The Strait of Hormuz may see increased presence from a variety of countries keen to prevent Iranian aggression against innocent sailors and help control the situation.

What was a bilateral spat has become a multinational issue of concern thanks to Iranian actions, and any likely response will almost certainly need to involve a multinational effort to deliver successfully.

For the Royal Navy though, questions are being asked about whether it should be bigger to meet the challenges placed on it. Already a legion of armchair admirals and instant maritime security experts are playing their favourite games of working out how a Batch 2 River class with Lynx, CIWS and death star superlaser would have somehow been the perfect answer to the problem, taking attention away from the problems of distance and activity, and sheltering in the comfort blanket of fantasy ORBATS.

The reality is that the RN response to this situation was better than practically any other country could have managed. It had a ship on station which was exceptionally close to the problem. It wasn’t quite close enough – but most other nations would have measured the distance to the nearest friendly warship in days or weeks sail – the RN measured it in barely an hour.

It is unlikely that any other nation could have managed to respond any more effectively, or with more ships. For starters we must stop beating ourselves up that we didn’t do enough. The RN presence has already protected multiple ships and it doubtless continue to protect many more. One incident must be measured against the countless prevented incidents. But, the Iranians only have to get lucky once – and on this occasion they did. That in itself does not mean that the RN has failed – could the French, German, Chinese or Japanese navies have done any better? Probably not.

Would a larger navy have helped reduce the likelihood of it happening? That is a question posed by those who want a bigger navy without specifying what they would do with it. Saying ‘if only the RN had 16 Type 23’s still’ does not mean that the RN would have had lots more ships in the Gulf. As noted, RN force levels have remained constant for decades.

Similarly, having more than one ship in theatre does not mean all would have been available – their programmes may have seen one on mid tour leave, or detached on exercise or somewhere so far away that even steaming at best effort, she was still days away from the problems.

Hindsight is magnificent, and it is easy to say ‘oh if only we’d had an extra destroyer and frigate present it wouldn’t have happened’. But as noted, there is no certainty, and little likelihood of the force being joined up together in this way, and also as noted with timings, it can only take a few minutes to seize a ship.

As was seen in 2007, the Iranians seized a small RN detachment despite there being multiple multinational escorts in the vicinity. If you can exploit time effectively, your ability to secure a victory increases – if you need 10 minutes to do something and a ship is 20 minutes away, there is little that can be done to stop it, despite that ship, in maritime terms being practically next door to you. You cannot change the laws of physics and you have to be realistic about how many ships you can build and operate. You also have to accept that decisions to reduce the fleet made many years ago can have a long-term impact felt for many years.  

For example the RN today is structured and shaped as it is partly as a result of difficult decisions to reduce the surface fleet that were taken in July 2004 which scrapped 12 ships, and saw a reduction from 32-25 escort ships, reductions in the number of Type 45 destroyers being purchased, and major reductions in manpower (the First Sea Lord at the time who authorised the decisions was Admiral Sir Alan West, now Lord West of Spithead). These decisions had a major long-term impact on the size and structure of the fleet that is only now being felt.

The Royal Navy is clear that in the medium term, its aspiration is to grow the size of the escort fleet. Already the running on of the Batch 1 River class suggest the overall force will be slightly larger, and in due course there is a publicly stated ambition to expand the escort force through the purchase of additional Type 31e frigates.

Expanding the force would increase reach, but it is important that this is done properly. There is little point announcing an intention to buy 50 extra escorts if the crew doesn’t exist for them. What is also clear is that before it gets more ships, the RN needs more people.

This may be less popular than buying warships, but given two vessels are laid up in long term low readiness due to a lack of crews, what the RN has to do is fix its manpower challenges. It needs to be able to get the right number of people to sea with the right skills, the right experience and the right training to do the jobs needed in all ranks and rates.

This isn’t as simple as opening the recruiting taps and flooding RALEIGH with new joiners. Its going to require a lot of time spent increasing things like spare bunks for trainees on ships at sea, or additional training courses (and associated accommodation) and all the little things needed for a bigger navy. Additionally a lot of retention negative issues need to be looked at to keep people in the system and not putting their notice in prematurely. Once these people are in the system, and able to go to sea, then the space exists to grow the fleet and put more ships into service.

At best had the RN been slightly larger then it is possible a second escort may have been a bit closer, but still outside of direct distance. Even if it had been on task with HMS MONTROSE, there would have been no guarantee it could have been on site quickly enough to prevent this incident occurring.

This has not been an easy blog article to write. It is not pleasant to think that a UK flagged merchant vessel has been illegally abducted by armed thugs from a rogue state determined to act in flagrant violation of international law and that the Royal Navy was unable to help.

The UK response in general to this situation has shown the UK possesses significant military reach and capability in the Middle East. It has also shown that the UK has sufficient resilience to flex additional resource when required to bolster existing force levels. It is a timely reminder though that there is a finite amount that any navy could have done in this situation. To adequately protect each merchant ship would require a 1:1 escort ratio, which is plainly impossible for any nation to deliver.

The UK response was better than most nations could have hoped to deliver, but still failed on the day to save the ship. We must focus now on two key things – firstly ensuring the safe release of the vessel and her crew, unharmed and able to continue their business.

Secondly, we must remember that the RN presence has protected, and will continue to protect countless other vessels over many decades in this complex and difficult operating area. They have not been able to help on one occasion, but how many other occasions have they saved the day? By all means focus on the now, but don’t forget how much has been stopped through the persistent presence and activity of the Royal Navy in the region.

I have no doubt that the reaction from some quarters to this blog will be to see it as being some kind of apologist article justifying what some believe to be unjustifiable. But we live in a resource constrained world of large distances and finite hulls and manpower with which to deliver a global presence to support our national interests. There is only so much that can be done.

What matters now is the safe release of the crew and the continued safety of the Royal Navy crew in the region. Let us keep this foremost in our minds as they once again sail difficult waters and conduct challenging operations to keep this nation safe where the tactical actions of (often very young and very junior) personnel will have strategic consequences. There is no doubt though that once again our nation’s finest people will rise to the challenge admirably.