Thin Pinstriped Line

  HMS PRINCE OF WALES (PWLS) has reportedly spent more time ‘in dock’ being repaired for various problems since commissioning than she has at sea. In the eyes of the media she is a broken ship unable to do her job – is this accurate or fair or is the picture more complex than portrayed? It is very easy to look at statistics and reach the assumption that a ship is somehow broken because she isn’t at sea. It is also easy to look at minor incidents and assume that these in turn have much bigger impact than the reality of the case. In the case of PWLS, the real picture is actually more positive than some may have you believe. The PWLS is the second ship of the QUEEN ELIZABETH class aircraft carriers, designed to provide a large platform capable of embarking up to 40 aircraft and operating globally as required. Displacing some 65,000 tonnes and some 284m long, she is the joint largest warship ever constructed in the UK and one of the largest, and most complex, warships on the planet....

  As the year draws to a close, the silly season in defence news reporting appears to be kicking off. The current contender for ‘most mind-blowingly wrong’ article on defence is based on an article that appeared in the Daily Telegraph this week, all about plans by Germany to ‘snub’ Britain by buying F35 and not Eurofighter for the replacement Tornadoes for its tactical nuclear mission. The article describes how the decision to buy the F35 is apparently a ‘blow’ to BAE Systems which helps manufacture the aircraft, and how in turn this is a snub to the British Government and Typhoon.  Rather oddly, the Telegraph splashed this story as a scoop in December 2022, when the announcement was made back in March 2022 The problem with articles like this is that they take a random collection of facts and turn them into a story which bears little resemblance to reality… It is often forgotten that at its heart NATO is fundamentally a nuclear alliance. During the Cold War not only did the...

  Historically the sight of a fleet of Dutch warships sailing up the Thames is a reason for panic in the UK. Over the centuries some of the more ‘uncomfortable’ moments of British naval history have occurred as a result of encounters with the supremely professional and capable vessels and sailors of the Royal Netherlands Navy. This week though four Dutch warships have visited London as friends and representatives of one of the UK’s strongest and most enduring military relationships. While it is fashionable to focus on the UK’s links to nations like the USA and other ‘Five-Eyes’ partners, or consider how to thicken military links in the Indo-Pacific, it is worth reflecting on the strength of the relationships enjoyed with other partners much closer to home. Some of the most important defence relationships that the UK enjoys occur with partners in Europe where joint operations are vital to securing long term British strategic interests. The publication of the ‘High North’ strate...

  The Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace MP, has raised some eyebrows with his comment that the British Army is currently only funded to “stay at home and do a bit of tootling around”. These comments, coming as the UK heads into a new Defence Review to determine the size and shape of the armed forces and defence budget provide a timely insight into the challenges facing the MOD right now. It is worth reminding ourselves why a Defence Review is underway as the Integrated Review, written 1 SofS Defence, 3 Prime Ministers, and 4 Chancellors ago (e.g. last year) is now looking already out of date. The significant changes to the global security environment driven by the invasion of Ukraine, the reinvigoration of NATO against a dangerous Russian threat, the challenges raised by ‘grey zone’ operations as well as the increasingly fraught relationship between the USA and China means that assumptions need to be revisited. The IR was an attempt to balance off British commitments ...

It has been a very good week for the Royal Navy, which has seen the confirmation of plans to order three Future Support Ships and five Type 26 frigates have been placed on contract for construction. This news cements a very substantial future work package for the next 10 years at least, and provides both certainty and long term stability for the UK shipbuilding industry. The Type 26 order is good news for several reasons. Firstly it provides confirmation that the RN will see out the full construction of this class of ship, with 8 hulls entering service between the late 2020s and mid 2030s. These will be in addition to large orders from both the Royal Australian and Canadian Navy for the design, which will become one of the most numerous and capable Western ASW frigates of the next decade. The decision to order all 8 hulls provides certainty for BAE Systems in Scotland, who can now progress with further investment in the Clyde and have guaranteed business for many years to come. With ...

  France has announced its new National Security Strategy, which will lay the foundation for French defence planning over the period 2024-30. This document sets out policy direction and guidance on where France sees its primary strategic interests and how it proposes to focus resources. There is, at time of writing, no English language version available (merde!) but there is plenty of coverage on it available. The UK and France are both nations that occupy very similar positions in the world – they are ‘more than a middling power’, enjoying a global network of interests and alliances, credible armed forces, effective soft power and diplomatic reach and a willingness to use force when necessary. For all the banter and disagreements, both nations have far more in common than differences, and a good strategic partners. It makes it timely for the UK to understand French policy direction, for it could highlight some of the challenges facing planners in Whitehall and the policy concern...

  It seems that the MOD budget settlement is heading for turbulent waters. Hints in Parliament suggest that the MOD requires a further £8bn a year just to factor out the cost of inflation and currency fluctuations. At a time when the UK needs to make significant financial savings, is this credible, and is a longer term growth to 3% of GDP a pipedream? Why though after a summer of pronouncements on Defence budget growth is this problem occurring, and what should we make of it? There are essentially three distinct challenges facing the MOD that it needs to resolve. The first is to work out how much money it has available in the short term and what it wants to spend this on. The budget settlements agreed in 2021 as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review are now effectively being reopened as part of wider efforts by the Treasury to balance the national budget. The combination of less money to go around, higher than anticipated inflation and a significant negative decline in the va...

 Every piece of military equipment will, eventually, be disposed of. Be it preserved in a museum, lost in combat or simply sold for scrap and recycling; an end is coming for everything that serves. The timing of such departures is not always ideal – the loss of HMS ARK ROYAL in 1978 was felt keenly in 1982. Arguably an even greater loss was that of the scrapping of the fleet repair ship HMS TRIUMPH, after nearly a decade in reserve in Chatham, barely a year before she would have been welcomed in the Falklands War. It is against this backdrop that a curious report has been published in the Mail, suggesting that the MOD is at fault for scrapping the Rapier missile system in 2021, when it could have been used by Ukraine instead. Apparently the MOD lack of psychic powers to predict the future (damn those pesky planning round options deleting this as a feature for staff officers) is a bad thing. This is a really curious article which consists of a group of think tank types, none of wh...

  Should your prior service be used as a guarantee of your future citizenship? This seems a hyperbolic question to ask, but one that has been raised this week following the revelation that several dozen British military pilots have reportedly been training the Chinese military. Reportedly contracted to provide technical advice in specific areas for around £250k per year (which buys a lot of watches), these pilots and aircrew have been accused of treason, demands to lose their UK nationality and resulted in swift action preventing similar occurrences in future.   On the one hand it is easy to feel strong moral indignation at the actions of these individuals, who having served their nation, have now taken the mercenary route of providing their knowledge and experience to help increase the capability of one of the worlds most dangerous states. Under President Xi, China has become an exceptionally hostile and aggressive dystopian totalitarian dictatorship, posing a clear and pre...