The Positive Case for Fewer Minehunters.

 

The Royal Navy is to accelerate the decommissioning of its SANDOWN class MCMV’s, with all five remaining ships paying off over the next four years. This is potentially good news.

The debate about naval power focuses and is fixated on hulls as a broad measure of capability. It is seen through the prism of having X of this ship type or Y of that ship type. People understand metrics that equate to tangible physical presence as it is something that can be easily quantified.

While this is understandable, we need to look past the vision of the warship hull as the capability itself, and regard it as the physical means to deliver a variety of missions. When these hulls were designed, the sole way that the mission could be done was by taking a crewed vessel, putting the mission systems onto the platform and then adding the requisite life support, propulsion and survival systems needed to ensure that the ship could move from location to location.

Our vision of what maritime power comprises is essentially defined by the number of platforms, not the missions we want them to carry out. Our entire debate is on platforms not capability. This is arguably a mistake.

The Royal Navy has long been a leader in the field of Mine Warfare, specialising for many years in providing a range of world beating techniques, platforms and equipment to tackle the mining threat across the globe.

The force has two main roles that matter above all else. Firstly to ensure that Faslane is safe for use to provide the assurance that the deterrent can be maintained at all times. Secondly it is to support allies in the Middle East, ensuring that freedom of navigation can be maintained at all times, particularly in this complex and challenging region.

Historically the Mine Warfare force relied on a combination of sweepers and hunters to find, clear and destroy mines. The days of sweeping are long gone, with the object now to use technology to find and destroy the mine safely.

Modern day operations place a huge premium on good hydrographic data, and understanding in intimate detail the operating area. This requires long slow and laborious surveying, building up a picture of an area and spotting what is changing.

In peacetime this is a safe, but dull task that takes up time and effort. In wartime it is a high risk task that can potentially cost lives if the ship is unlucky. Any ship can be a minehunter – once.

The RN has for some years being trying to pivot away from the reliance on the crewed vessels, and instead focusing on autonomous or uncrewed drones to carry out this work instead. Partly this is common sense – why send a crewed ship  into a suspected minefield if you don’t have to? Partly it relies on the limits of human endurance – keeping ships at sea on task for any length of time ties up people, platforms and needs more than you may think to do a simple job.

For example, smaller ships have a finite endurance, and will need to return to port or base ships reasonably regularly for repairs and maintenance and crew rest. Anyone who has been in the forward accommodation space of an RN HUNT class will testify that it borders on being a ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ for inmates, particularly in difficult weather or climatic conditions.

To keep the search going for mines on a sustained basis requires a number of ships, all to do the same job. That’s multiple points of failure, from machinery breakdowns, gapped crew, or just weather conditions preventing them operating effectively. Keeping the task going on an enduring basis isn’t always easy.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

By contrast moving to uncrewed systems changes the equation significantly. You can use the systems to keep searching on a much longer time frame, needing a much smaller pool of people to operate and sustain them, from the comforts of a shore base and not a small ship at sea. This increases endurance and increases overall capability and availability.

In any objective assessment, the purpose of the MCMV fleet is to act as taxis to get the search and disposal systems to the operational area. This generates a footprint of people, logistics support, force protection considerations (e.g. in a warzone do you need more gunners or a frigate to provide top cover). Its also tying up dozens of highly skilled sailors to operate a ship who could be used elsewhere instead.

If you take a view that the role of the RN is to deliver capability not platforms, then moving to these systems as a start makes a lot of sense. Why continue to rely on small ships when you could put uncrewed systems into use instead and deliver exactly the same effect, if not better and probably for less taxpayer cost than keeping a group of elderly vessels operational?

The challenge the RN has got to address is ‘when do we start doing this’? It faces a bit of a dilemma – it has an elderly force of ships that are costing money to run, require refits, upgrades and support to keep going, and in doing so tie up multiple ships company’s worth of crew in order to deliver their capability.

For a few years now the RN has been trialling a range of capabilities in this field, and there are now a number of platforms in use to demonstrate different solutions. The challenge is to turn this into a properly resourced, funded and operational capability – money arguably tied up in the existing force of ships and people.

The RN wants to replace the ships, but it has finite funding to do so, and every pound spent on running on a capability for a bit longer by upgrading it, is a pound less to sort out new capability for the future.

What appears to have happened is that the RN has taken a genuinely bold decision. Rather than drag this out for years with ever older ships which are ever more fragile, it has instead chosen to focus on the future.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

To that end it will pay the ships off, and presumably surge funding and resources to bring the new capability into play much more quickly than expected. This has several benefits.

Firstly, it puts the RN at the head of the queue for bringing this world beating equipment into service – this provides significant influence, both to shape developments and ensure that the defence industry focuses on producing equipment now that meets the RN needs.

If the RN adopted in a few years time, it will find itself in competition with others for finite industrial resource and designs – forcing it to choose between existing products that need to be adapted, or waiting for its own. By striking early, the RN sets the terms of the race to the next generation of mine warfare.

Secondly, paying these ships off frees up people to work up the new capability properly. There is only a finite number of people qualified and trained in mine warfare in any navy – the RN is no exception to this. If the SANDOWN class were kept in service, then it would reduce the people available to train on, work up and introduce to service the new equipment.

By freeing up these people now, the RN has created a much bigger pool of people who can be employed to get the training right, and accelerate the introduction into service. This will have much better operational benefits than relying on reduced numbers and ‘pinch points’ of insufficient people at different levels of experience.

It more widely generates crews who can be freed up from operating their ship to go and fill other gaps in the fleet, helping increase overall availability in other areas, and ease the pressure on crews. There is no point having lots of ships if you don’t have enough people to sail and operate them.

The result overall is that the RN drops hulls, but retains and expands its capability to do its job. Surely this is the right outcome?

It will not be seen this way by many, who will focus on the reduced numbers of ships, not the investment in new technology. There is a strong argument to be made that the RN needs small ships to generate crews with experience, particularly as XO/CO drives for younger officers. Removing these ships from the fleet will reduce these opportunities accordingly.

There is also the ‘soft power’ factor that a warship can do more than just its operational role, and conduct a wide range of other tasks from defence diplomacy to supporting other missions or exercises. There will be a reduction in secondary availability as a result of this, which could reduce the RN in the public eye somewhat.

However, there is an equal counter that we know very little about what form this new capability will take. While uncrewed systems will form its heart, they will also need support solutions too, in order to deploy them.

It seems entirely possible that additional vessels will be introduced to service to support the new systems – so called ‘motherships’ to support operations. They may lack the glamour of the bigger ships, but they will doubtless provide vital support and remain hulls in the RN fleet.

No doubt many electrons will be shed in vicious online debates about the relative size, capabilities and fittings of these ships, with the only clear conclusion being that they lack enough main guns, CIWS and anti-ship missiles to be of any value.

The story of the Royal Navy is one of constant change. The fleet of today is unrecognisable from the one of 100 years ago, which in turn was unrecognisable from the one of 30 years before, let alone 100 years prior.

New ships, new technology and new ways of fighting are always coming into service. The great strength of the RN has been its ability to stand at the forefront of this advance, not follow on as a late adaptor.

One only has to look at the adoption of the WARRIOR or the DREADNOUGHT to see how significant risks were taken to leap ahead of potential peer rivals. Lord Fisher took difficult calls to get rid of ships, despite their being part of the force, because he knew it was better to focus on technology, not platforms. Arguably this decision needs to be seen in a similar light.

For the first time in history we are approaching a point where we can genuinely see a way to warships not always being required to carry out naval tasks. Other options built around uncrewed systems, surveillance platforms and drones are increasingly becoming available which will revolutionise how maritime operations are conducted. Only in the last week, the US Navy fired anti-ship missiles at sea from uncrewed ships as part of a demonstration – this will become more common.

The RN needs to consider these changes to work out how best to reflect them, embrace them and ensure that it remains at the leading edge of naval powers as a result. Part of this will mean potentially presentationally difficult changes – reducing ship numbers while retaining capabilities is a good example of this.

People understand ship numbers in a way that they do not necessarily easily understand the systems within them. It will be a significant communications challenge to explain that the future of the RN involves the same level, if not more, of capability availability even if fewer ships exist to deliver it.

This will need to be sold to allies too – in particular in the Middle East. The RN presence in Bahrain is an operational force that has strategic clout. It is essential that the RN is able to demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt to its friends, partners, allies and peer rivals that the capability it possesses is the equal of, if not better than, the crewed ships it replaces. The loss of this confidence will be potentially fatal – perhaps this too is a good reason why the RN is investing heavily now in people and resources to get it right early.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There is also wider considerations to be had, beyond just the initial loss of the hulls. What does the fighting ethos and doctrine of the Royal Navy look like as it transitions to becoming, in part, a land based fighting force?

For a service that prides itself in operating and fighting at sea, moving to a world of operations from ISO containers and HQ’s will potentially change its ethos and approach. Its hardly the same as the ‘Cruel Sea’ as you emerge bleary eyed from a darkened ISO container to go and get a brew from the NAAFI, with the only risk being that the RAF Regiment section guarding it don’t raise the barrier in time for your vehicle to get under.

Forming a cohesive ‘ships company’ in what is almost an Army style unit of sailors ashore actually presents some really challenging leadership and command questions. It also poses a wider question of career development – if your ‘command tour’ as a warfare officer is an RN drone unit, would you be credible in more senior roles requiring nautical experience?

Is there a wider issue too of separation – that parts of the Service spend more and more time ashore, but operating in the maritime domain, and how do leaders prevent this creating a separate ‘fighting arm’ with the cultural challenges this presents? Over time, as more people transition into roles involving these sorts of land based posts, this will potentially raise some real cultural issues.

Finally what does this mean for wider procurement decisions? Much of the RN budget is built around buying self-defence equipment for ships, and the means to protect them so that they can ‘float, move and fight’ to deliver their goal. A transition to a shore base may reduce the threat to sailors at sea, but creates a fixed and easily identifiable target.

What does this mean for investment in areas like short / medium range air defence, or BMD to protect enemy ballistic missiles from targeting the site? What is the impact on force protection measures too – does more need to be done to invest in proper close in defence, and is a future role for the Royal Marines to be to provide FP measures for shore installations?

These are all open questions, but perhaps highlight the real challenges facing planners when it comes to looking at this sort of decision. It does not remove risks or threats, it merely moves them to a new domain. Suddenly the RN may need to draw on RAF and Army funding to ensure it has the right protection ready to be able to operate at sea – what is being sacrificed, and by whom, in the budget, to pay for this?

More widely it raises questions about the RN’s own budgetary priorities. The success of projects like this rely on data, information and the ability to gain maritime understanding. This requires investment in unglamorous capabilities, or niche areas like hydrographics, and less on front line frigates and destroyers. As budgets start to buckle, where does the RN choose to place its own funding and what is most important to ringfence and protect?

Overall this is a fascinating and exciting time for the Royal Navy. It stands on the cusp of leading the way into the next generation of naval operations. It has an opportunity to set the agenda, define the capabilities needed and become the world leader in this space.

If the price to be paid to keep an identical, if not better, level of capability is losing some elderly vessels a few years early, without loss of operational outputs, then this is a price well worth paying.