' Why The Answer Isn't Always Royal Navy Carriers'

 

Even as the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force continue to acquit themselves with distinction in the Middle East, there are loud murmurings from the home front that the UK has wasted time and money on the carrier fleet, and that a failure to send a carrier to strike the Houthi sites means that apparently carriers are useless white elephants. No matter what the crisis or relevance, we seem destined to live in a world where armchair ‘experts’ decry any decision to not use the carrier operationally. What is it they know that the MOD does not?

The UK has spent many years and a lot of money acquiring a Carrier Strike capability, built around a pair of aircraft carriers, designed from the outset to operate the F35 (both UK and allied), every major military helicopter in the UK inventory, including Merlin, Chinook, Apache and Lynx Wildcat as well as a range of uncrewed UAVs. Supported by air defence and anti-submarine warfare escorts as well as RFA stores support (currently theoretically given the desperate state of the RFA at the moment), the force represents a highly credible capability able to operate globally in support of British and allied interests.  Both carriers had a busy 2023, with concurrent deployments undertaken in the Baltic and Western Atlantic, while there is likely to be a similarly busy 2024, with the MOD confirming further NATO deployments are likely during this time.  Given the opportunities that they offer and the inherent flexibility of the design, it is easy to understand why people are asking why these ships haven’t been deployed to the Southern Red Sea to support ongoing operations against Iranian backed Houthi militants.

UK MOD © Crown copyright 2023

The first point to note is that the decision to deploy a carrier is a political one. Ministers, not Admirals, make the decision on matters like this. They will do so based on advice from the MOD, which will provide a range of options setting out how to meet overall strategic ministerial ambition. For example, if Ministers have said (and this is entirely hypothetical), that they wish the UK to play a leading role in taking action against the Houthi, then MOD planners would note what could be potentially done, be it airpower from Cyprus, maritime operations in the Red Sea, possible Special Forces or other Army assets on land and so on. This advice would set out the benefits and how the force packages could meet this ambition, but also the costs of doing so – both financially as well as longer term on the planned operational programme.

Nothing can be done without an impact – sending a carrier to the Gulf on an unscheduled deployment means taking it off its planned programme. Such a move may impact on training, integration work, planned joint exercises, refit and maintenance plans across not just the carrier, but also the escort group and airwing. This doesn’t mean that it should not be done, but that the cost of doing something may be greater with some options than others. The decision on what should be done rightly falls to Ministers to accept the option that most suits their political and policy goals. They can be advised, but Ministers decide. In this case it seems that, for now, the decision made by Ministers is that it isn’t the right time to send a carrier group.

In conducting these strikes there is a balancing act that must be struck. At the current stage of the operations, the UK requirement appears to be for air defence (provided by HMS DIAMOND), escort of UK vessels (which may also be provided by HMS RICHMOND) and a limited air strike capability on specific targets, delivered by Typhoon. This is likely underpinned by intelligence collection, logistics and other enablers. While some have wrongly focused on the perceived foolishness of sending Typhoons on a 3000 mile trip from Cyprus, this rather misses the point. Sending a carrier strike group to the Southern Red Sea is an approximately 8500 mile round trip, costing significantly more in fuel costs than sending four Typhoons and a Voyager.  Given the importance of RAF Akrotiri to UK operations across the Middle East and the near permanent presence of Typhoons and Voyagers at the base, this is a strike that can be carried out among other operations. When the current requirement is for just two sets of air strikes, this represents a far more effective use of defence assets to use pre-existing assets already in the region over a bespoke deployment. At the current strike rate, there is little need for a carrier, and the disruption to programmes, and tying up of the F35 force and wider assets for some months is likely to be a far greater cost than just using the Typhoon force.

UK MOD © Crown copyright 2023

It is possible that the equation may quickly change – if for example the need became to deliver regular strikes on Houthi targets, then the presence of a Royal Navy carrier would be advantageous. A shorter flying time and quicker response means that if the rate of strikes had to step up, then an RN carrier would potentially, for a finite time, be a better option than using Cyprus. The limitations are, of course, the number of munitions in the magazines, and the fact that without an operational RFA solid store ship, the carrier would periodically need to put into a friendly port to rearm and restore. Finding a friendly port in this region with a host nation willing to allow munitions loading via its airports may be challenging – although Duqm is a potential host port, Oman may not want UK operations conducted there given the impact on its own borders. There are no other ports easily accessible from the Red Sea that the Royal Navy could use without either disruption with time off station, or repeated Suez Canal transits. The RN may need to use a US supply ship to stay on station for a longer period or reduce coverage.

Another case could be made for the carrier to follow in due course to relieve other ships in the region. At some point US carriers will need to return home for microwaved tea and more cookies (noting that the current CO of EISENHOWER exceptional social media account!) The RN could, if the desire was there, be a strong contender to replace the Ike, particularly noting the exceptional interoperability of the QE design with US military assets, particularly the Osprey and USMC F35. In these circumstances, having an RN carrier able to take on this role would ease pressure on the US carrier battle force, which would definitely be welcomed by the USN. This is, of course, entirely speculation on the authors part, but it does highlight that one of the advantages of the QE design is its ability to integrate with US peers and support them in a way no other allied carrier design can.

The biggest danger in times like this is the way that loud commentators shout at length at what they see as a clear failure by the MOD to ‘do something’. They fail to grasp that defence is about delivering a golf bag of different ‘capability clubs’ which are right at different times. The RN carrier force is a fantastic asset, it brings enormous capability and if needed, would be extremely valuable in the region. But the question is ‘is it needed now’? Rather than answer this question, people have assumed that just because something is going on, everything is needed NOW and anything not needed is by definition defunct. This sort of nonsense if applied would mean that after the Falklands War, we’d have offloaded all of our main battle tanks as they weren’t deployed, or after the 1991 Gulf War we’d have scrapped our carrier force as, again, it wasn’t used. Not everything needs to be used on every occasion, and what is telling is that people will not take a strategic perspective in all this.

It is frustrating to see articles in the press implying that somehow the RN has ‘failed’ here for failing to deploy an asset which, at this point, does not need to be deployed and where better, cheaper and more efficient means of delivering the intended effect exist. It’s the same nonsensical logic that infers that because 5 of 6 Type 45s are not deployed now, the design is a failure. Lets ignore that for most of last year at least half the force completed multi-month deployments and have only recently returned home, or that right now HMS DIAMOND is in harms way and serving in the finest traditions of the Service. Instead these people shout angrily at clouds because they don’t understand and can’t be bothered to understand how these things really work.

Strategically we are at the start of the Carrier Strike journey, and it is very early days in the projected 50-year lifespan of these vessels. There will be many times in years to come when sending a carrier is absolutely the right thing to do, but this may not always happen for very good reasons. The question is ‘what is the right tool for the job for the UK now’, not ‘the answer is the carrier, whats the question?’