Looking to the Future - The Royal Navy Four Decades On From the Falklands War

The Falklands War ended 38 years ago this week, which means that the war is now as far away from us as D-Day was from the forces of 1982. The war was arguably the only occasion in British naval history in which the aircraft carrier force represented a strategic centre of gravity, and highlighted the ability of the Royal Navy to work in effective large task groups.

While it is a perennial easy headline to write about how the UK has less warships than in 1982, and how the islands are at risk of attack / invasion and occupation by Argentina (presumably given the much denuded state of the Argentine forces via the medium of particularly aggressive mutated ill-tempered penguins), it is helpful to reflect on how far the Royal Navy has come in the intervening four decades.

This is particularly visible in the recent news that the strike carrier HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH is now at sea off the UK coast conducting fixed wing flying operations with RAF and RN F35 strike fighters. The ship has, following a period of operational sea training moved to the next stage of working up and force generation as she prepares to carry out the final part of carrier trials and move to her first operational deployment next year.

It has taken some time, and 10 difficult years without a fixed wing presence in the RN, but the fact is that today the Royal Navy is the proud owner of a pair of phenomenally capable aircraft carriers that permit it to project power across the globe at a time and place of its choosing.

The news that fixed wing flying ops are underway is just one part of the wider evolution underway in the RN, as a variety of projects and capabilities come good after years of work to design and develop them.

For example the Fleet Air Arm has recently been conducting test firings of the Martlet anti-ship missile, which will provide a very potent ability to deter surface vessels. Part of the replacement for the venerable Sea Skua system, this missile will considerably add to the anti-surface capabilities of the fleet, and help protect the carrier too.

At the same time the Crowsnest system continues to be tested pending entry into service. The former Sea King AEW/ASACs capability was a key lesson that came out of the Falklands War, and over the following 30 years played a central part in many UK operations, both at sea and on land, where its versatility as an ISTAR platform was hugely appreciated by commanders.

The replacement system will be welcomed as a means of enhancing the visibility and awareness of the carrier task group and when added to the considerable ISTAR capabilities of the F35 platform, it becomes clear that the UK is on the verge of significantly increasing its capabilities for both maritime strike and ISTAR – both of which were key areas of the Falklands campaign.

This return to capability is encouraging too as it highlights that when properly managed, the armed forces are able to take ‘capability holidays’ that do not become permanent gaps. Having chosen for sound strategic reasons to take a gap in operating carriers for around 10 years, there was always a fear that as other assets dropped away too, the UK would find it much easier to take the decision to permanently remove the capability from service.

Instead the Royal Navy and RAF have been effectively able to manage this risk and are now finally seeing much missed capabilities and platforms replaced by even more impressive successors. This is a very positive development, and worth remembering as defence reviews and spending rounds approach – it is possible to go on capability holiday and go back to work!

While much of the attention has focused naturally on the carrier as the centrepiece of events, it is worth focusing on the wider significant shifts occurring in how the Royal Navy operates. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a genuine revolution occurring at the moment, which will significantly alter the way that ships operate and deploy, and it is important to understand this.

For decades the RN has operated mostly around the singleton deployer model, where a vessel would go to sea by herself, or with an RFA support ship and conduct a deployment and then return. Occasional wider groups would be set up for set piece operations – OCEAN WAVE 97, TAURUS 09 or COUGAR 13 are all good examples of how the RN operated group deployments. But, at its heart the RN has for decades been a singleton deployer navy, and has run a force generation and basing cycle to match this.

Significant change is now afoot – the quiet rebranding of the First Patrol Boat Squadron into the Coastal Forces Squadron (fingers crossed the name HMS HORNET is recommissioned too in some way!) and the establishment of the Overseas Patrol Squadron for the management of the Batch 2 River class points the way to how the RN plans to use these extremely capable vessels in future.

The new model of RN operations is likely to see five corvette sized ships permanently based in the Falklands, West Indies, Gibraltar and the Asia Pacific region on an enduring basis, while the Batch 1’s continue in their OPV role. This is in addition to a Type 23 being permanently based in Bahrain too.

Within the next 18 months, the Royal Navy will become one of only four navies in the whole world to operate ships that are permanently based abroad (the others being the US, France and the Netherlands – which has a small ship based in the West Indies). The Royal Navy will have potentially 2 FPBs in Gibraltar, 5 OPVs, 1 frigate, 4 MCMVs and an RFA permanently based away from home – that is a very substantial global presence by any reasonable standard.

At the same time the escort force will be refocused onto delivering support to the carrier task group in a much more organised way. The days of singleton deployers are all but gone forever, as the future RN focuses on training, operating and fighting as a Task Group Navy for the first time in several decades.

This is a genuinely exciting time – with superb new ships entering service and the regeneration of equipment leading to an increase in capability, the Royal Navy is entering the 2020s in potentially a very good place from an equipment perspective.  It will be one of only two, possibly three navies to have a 24/7/365 carrier strike group available, and will help reinforce its position as one of the leading navies on the planet.

While the outlook is very positive, there are also considerable challenges that need to be managed too. For starters COVID-19 has blown an enormous hole in financial plans around the world, and it remains completely unclear about what this may mean for defence budget plans.

No one can say with any certainty how the MOD will fare from the next spending round, or what damage is being inflicted to the defence industrial base right now that could have much longer term strategic ramifications – while the major companies may survive, the UK aerospace, defence and security industry consists of thousands of smaller companies that feed into it, meaning that a failure two or three levels below the big primes may have a significant impact on longer term projects that right now is just now recognised.

The defence review too may have to make difficult decisions on both funding and also operational priorities as the wider geopolitical uncertainties around the future of NATO, insecurity in the Asia-Pacific region and the growing tensions in the ‘High North’ all point to a world where there will be plenty of crises to get involved in, but only a finite amount of capability to deploy.

Whether the RN aspirations to remain a carrier task group focused navy survive the defence review is not yet clear (nor is any other Service aspiration). While the desire to do this is doubtless at the very heart of both RN and RAF planners thinking, it remains to be seen if it can happen or not, and if the carriers remain in service as figureheads, but denuded of the critical supporting enablers that make the difference between being a fighting navy and a decorational navy.

These challenges come too at a point when the RN is still struggling as part of wider MOD to reconcile significant shortfalls in the budgetary position and trying to ensure its headcount and career structure remains relevant. While overall numbers look reasonable, trying to fill the gaps of experience and structural shortfalls in a wide range of areas is going to be vital to keeping ships at sea – this is why there is a raft of measures being adopted to improve retention, for example the adoption of the PWO badges for those individuals who have passed the highly demanding PWO course (or as their possibly jealous colleagues may suggest, it’s a special badge for those who didn’t do well enough at school to get a proper naval job).

There are no doubt significant challenges ahead too on the force generation front – the Type 23 force is coming back to sea in reasonable numbers, but it also is getting elderly and fragile. Any delays to Type 31 or 26 as part of the defence reviews dreaded ‘defer, descope, delay’ options could be keenly felt on the front line.

Also the RFA may have acquired some superb new tankers, but is now seemingly reliant on one 30 year old store ship with two others in reserve (the FORT class being the last active Falklands veterans in UK service). While the carrier group is potent, ensuring that the supply ships needed to keep them operational a long way from home are available is perhaps the single most important priority in the surface fleet right now – failure to invest in the FSS project would mean that the UK has acquired a carrier, but no means to keep the force at sea fuelled and stored for war on an enduring basis, and is also forced between supporting the carrier group, or supporting the amphibious or other forces instead.

There is a worry that difficult decisions taken some years ago around ship availability, crewing and readiness for different issues are coming home to roost now, and that the real challenge is ensuring that the RFA remains relevant and able to operate for the medium term.

Overall though it is worth taking a positive view on the situation – four decades on from the Falklands and the Royal Navy is arguably in a much better position than it was in 1982. More modern ships, more capable platforms and while fewer in number, are individually better equipped and fitted to carry out the roles asked of them.

When combined with a clear vision of what the role of the Royal Navy is in supporting national interest around the world, the sense is that for all the challenges it faces (and there is no navy on the planet that doesn’t face challenges on a daily basis), the UK continues to enjoy the services of a world class navy that remains very much the headmark standard to which others aspire to be.