No The Royal Navy Is Not About To Scrap 'Vulnerable' Carriers

 

Is the Royal Navy thinking of scrapping its vulnerable aircraft carriers as part of the ongoing defence review? In a word, ‘no’ but this hasn’t stopped parts of social media getting quite worked up on the subject over the last few days! The genesis of this is a series of media articles which talk about the analysis of the carriers against modern threats, the suggestion that in some scenarios they are vulnerable to sinking, and in turn, separate reports that the Treasury has asked the RN to look at the costs of mothballing one. There are really a couple of issues here which need briefly unpacking to help add some context as to why this is important to do, and why the RN is not likely to see the end of the carrier force any time soon.

On the first issue – vulnerability. Every piece of military equipment out there is vulnerable to a threat and in the right circumstances can be overpowered or destroyed. Look at Ukraine where a wide range of Western land vehicles, many of which have, or continue to, form part of many NATO armies, are seeing attrition as they are destroyed. This is to be expected – in war time there will always be scenarios when the opponent is able to outfox you, fire a lucky shot and trigger a chain reaction that will destroy your tank / plane / warship (come to think of it, even the Death Star had a weak spot!).  

UK MOD © Crown copyright 2024

Equipment is always going to have a vulnerable spot, and there are always trade offs made in the design – for example in tanks striking the right balance of ‘speed / armour / firepower’ as a triangle which points to three priorities in a design that need to work effectively, and accept compromises to one area, to enable increased capability in others.  There is also an evolutionary aspect to this, as a vehicle or jet that enters service will be designed to respond to the threats of the time and hopefully outmatch them. But over its life, as other more modern equipment enters service, the picture will change. The previously advanced kit will be more vulnerable, or require investment in updating it to remain able to carry out its mission as planned. This cycle has happened to just about every military weapon system in history and is neither new, nor unexpected.

In the case of the carriers, it is worth reflecting that the basic requirements for CVF (as was) were written about 30 years ago. Many of the initial threat scenarios for CVF were drawn up in the mid 1990s when the threat from Russia was changing. If you know where to look, a significant amount of the early paperwork for the CVF design is now in the National Archives in Kew, including the early scenarios that were used to wargame the ships utility in different potential conflicts (drawn up around 1994-1995 and modelled out to the late 2010s). These formed the basis for the analysis of the threat and the capability requirement for the carriers that in turn formed the CVF design.  Over time this threat will change – we have ships today whose very initial design requirement was drawn up 25-30 years. The world has changed beyond recognition during this time and technology changed too.

The point of modelling vulnerability scenarios like the ones leaked to the press is not to demonstrate that the CVF is vulnerable and therefore pointless. It is to understand what is needed to ensure the relevance of the design and survivability (e.g. upgrades, refits, additional capabilities in hard/soft kill etc) and in turn understand where to prioritise funding. For example (and this is utterly hypothetical) if the RN carried out a series of wargames modelling how the carriers would fare in a shooting war against the latest Russian missiles, based on our current understanding of that technology, it may show that there is a vulnerability in certain scenarios. In turn, understanding this vulnerability helps to know how to mitigate it – is the answer more weapons, is it better soft kill, is it additional escorts assigned to the battle group to pick up the threat and deal with it earlier on?

In turn this analysis helps the MOD work out how much money is needed to address the problem, and whether it means a revision of force structures too. For example (again entirely hypothetical), it may be identified that the best way to address this issue is to refit a soft kill countermeasures system onto the carrier, but also add two more escort ships into the battlegroup when it deploys. This would then mean that the MOD could add this new requirement to the pot to be funded when the carrier next has a refit (or compromise on something else instead to make it happen). It may allow discussions about force generation – does the RN need more escort ships to meet this scenario, or could it reallocate resources to do things differently (e.g. send 6 ships to this role, not 4 but accept we won’t do another j0b). It may also drive discussions around asking allies for increased contributions- for example getting an ally to agree to commit one of their escorts in wartime to this mission).

This analysis is important as it works out where emerging gaps are and what needs to be done about them. It can shape how millions of pounds of public money is spent, and in turn how the Royal Navy is prepared to fight wars. It emphatically does not mean that the carrier force is inherently vulnerable – every warship on  the planet is vulnerable in the right situation where the enemy is having a good day and you are not.  What is important though is to understand the context in which it is done, and not assume that somehow because on one particular scenario, in an increasingly unlikely chain of events, a carrier becomes pointless because it may be sunk.

UK MOD © Crown copyright 2024

The next suggestion is that the RN is thinking about scrapping one of the carriers because it held talks with the Treasury, where apparently officials suggested this action as a means of solving financial problems. Is this a fair representation of the situation? Again, its probably not quite what was meant. The role of the Treasury is to ensure public money is spent appropriately and effectively, and that resources allocated are used to their best effect. There is, and always has been an ongoing tension in government between departments that will always want more resource, and a Treasury that only has finite resource to draw on. Every Department will ask for more, the role of the Treasury is to assess the validity of these claims and see if more is needed, or if changes could be made that would free resources up.

In this case, it is no secret that the MOD has faced some challenges in recent years, and continues to face challenges in trying to ensure that its budget meets its needs. There is a need to demonstrate that every pound is spent wisely, and to see if adjusting plans could help solve problems without needing to get additional money. It makes sense to ask difficult and emotionally charged questions of the military to ensure that the logic holds up and that they really do need the money.

In the case of the carrier, it would be entirely appropriate for the Treasury to ask for the RN to explore how much could be saved by mothballing or paying off a carrier. They are one of the biggest sources of expense in the RN, both in resource and people, and tie up a lot of available resources to keep active. If you look at the carrier programme year to year, you have got running costs (fuel, maintenance, port visit costs), salary costs of crew, the cost of keeping additional ships available to escort the carrier (e.g. if you need the ship for NATO tasks, you’ll have to ensure that a lot of supporting assets are ready too) and upgrade costs (e.g. refits and refurbishments). Add to this the cost of air assets, munitions, the basic cost of food and operating the vessel and the supporting battlegroup and this quickly becomes a very significant sum of money. Take it to the next level and you’ve then got the costs of the dockyard infrastructure to keep the ships in (e.g. Portsmouth, Glen Mallan munitions depot, facilities in Rosyth etc) and training schools and the cost of generating personnel to crew the ships. Bring it all together and suddenly the cost of running one carrier may actually add up to quite a lot. 

But this is just one way to look at it. Another way is to ask ‘if we scrap the carrier, what are we committed to doing that still needs to be done?’. Carriers do not exist in isolation, they will be part of the UK’s commitment to NATO and wider alliances – we have undertaken as a nation to provide military capabilities that we would be on the hook to deliver. For example, if (utterly hypothetically) the RN was committed to providing a carrier with F35, Merlin and AEW to carry out strike and ASW in the northern Atlantic as part of the NATO striking force, what happens if it goes? The strike and ASW mission remain, which may mean we’d need to spend more on ASW platforms, perhaps increasing the number of airframes in service or getting additional ships to operate from. Alternatively we may need to buy more F35s and tanker aircraft to reflect changed deployment patterns (e.g. land based and needing to fly further or forward deploy). There may be all manner of changes required to deliver this capability, which could end up costing more than just keeping the carrier in service.

 Similarly you may want to understand what the costs for the platform look like downstream, is it due a refit that could be cancelled if you paid it off? Would putting a ship into mothballs help free up sailors to take other ships to sea like the LPD fleet? Would it solve crew problems elsewhere that in turn eased pressure on retention?  Would scrapping a carrier mean you could buy fewer RFA FSS or jets – in turn, what impact would this have on these programmes to generate greater savings. Similarly, if you were to mothball or scrap one, you’d need fewer assets to support the carriers, and could delay or scrap procurement and refit plans across the MOD. The knock on impact of scrapping an asset may play out in dozens of programmes across Defence, providing significant cost savings for years to come that could be recycled back into the budget to buy out risks elsewhere. This is potentially an opportunity, but its only by assessing it that we can judge if the risk is worth taking or not.

Its really important to do this though because you cannot run a defence budget on the assumption of sacred cows (arguably other than CASD).  Everything needs to be questioned to understand why it is the right course of action, why it makes sense to do what is being done, and why the impact of doing something may be far greater than the short term savings it generates. Only by understanding the true impact of this can you make informed decisions on how to invest in defence and where you can take risk or do things differently.  Its very unlikely that the RN would scrap a carrier shortly after they both entered service and were still working up to full operational capability. But you do need to understand how it all fits together to work out whether the cost of the carrier is worth the investment, or if something else is more important.

UK MOD © Crown copyright 2024

What does this all mean then? For starters, its important to understand that the carriers are not somehow immediately vulnerable and should be scrapped as white elephants, despite what some think. Similarly, they need to be able to show they are relevant and capable of responding to the main range of anticipated threats and scenarios they’ll deploy in, and if so, what needs to be done to make them viable in coming years. These are ships whose requirements were set in the 1990s, and who will be in service till the 2060s – some 70 years after first concept discussions were held. Its inevitable risks and vulnerabilities will change in this time.  Its also important to understand that talking about an option doesn’t mean it will happen. Its likely that the RN did talk about what scrapping a carrier would mean, primarily to show that this would have such a significant impact on wider defence outputs that actually it was not a credible or sensible plan. But you need to do your homework to be certain of making your case properly.

The sad truth of the carriers is that they are victims of social media hysteria, beset by hysterical tweets attacking the lack of planes on deck, even when they had jets embarked days previously. They are seen as white elephants, despite having clear roles and they are seen as expensive, despite the capital cost being long paid for. They are vital defence assets that benefit all three services, and offer real value to the nation and our allies. We should be analytically critical of them, but not jump at every opportunity to criticise for the sake of it.