[BITList] Armed Forces Turf War in UK gets hotter.

[John Feltham]

A well researched report.


The Navy strikes back

Rivalry among the three armed forces has flared into open warfare, as  
generals, air marshals and admirals strive to preserve their funding.  
And it is the Navy that is the most vulnerable.
by Neil Tweedie
Published: 7:00AM BST 18 Jun 2009


HMS Newcastle (foreground) leaves the South Korean port of Pusan  
Photo: PRESS ASSOCIATION

A formidable array of naval power greeted the visitor to Portsmouth  
last week. There was the carrier Invincible, veteran of the Falklands  
War, the air-defence destroyers Exeter, Nottingham and Southampton and  
the patrol ships Leeds Castle and Dumbarton Castle. Four Royal Fleet  
Auxiliary replenishment ships were there, too – Fort Austin, Oakleaf,  
Brambleleaf and Grey Rover. Together they would form a powerful  
flotilla, capable of projecting British influence to the far corners  
of the globe. But this task force will never sail.

All of the above vessels are mothballed or earmarked for disposal.  
Invincible is flagship of a ghost fleet, added to year by year as the  
Royal Navy, once mistress of the seas, shrinks inexorably. Government  
borrowing is reaching critical levels and the call for cuts grows  
louder in Whitehall. Defence, less sensitive in electoral terms than  
health, education and welfare, is already in the Treasury's sights.  
Gordon Brown has shown little affection for the military – it was he,  
after all, who combined the posts of Defence Secretary and Scottish  
Secretary, relegating supervision of the Armed Forces to the status of  
part-time job.

Unloved by their civilian masters, the Service chiefs have taken to  
fighting amongst themselves. Inter-service rivalry, always brewing  
under the surface, has flared into open warfare as generals, air  
marshals and admirals seek to preserve their slice of the crumbling  
budgetary cake. All three Service heads, General Sir Richard Dannatt,  
Chief of the General Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, Chief  
of the Air Staff, and Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the First Sea Lord,  
retire next month. With nothing to lose, the gloves are off in the  
Ministry of Defence. A Royal Navy officer involved in planning puts it  
this way: "It is an appalling state of internecine warfare that has  
got to stop because otherwise it will allow the Treasury to move in  
and be more destructive than al-Qa'eda."

The defence budget, £38 billion last year, 2.2 per cent of GDP, is  
under severe pressure. It will not be cut in absolute terms but the  
rate of its growth will be reduced – resulting in 10 per cent less  
being spent over the next five years than originally planned. That may  
not sound too bad, until one factors in 'defence inflation'.

When a ship, aircraft or missile enters service it invariably costs  
more, usually much more, than the item it replaces. Greater complexity  
is a major factor but poor procurement decisions and bad project  
management often play a part. Even in a time of low general inflation  
the defence budget must grow to keep pace with defence inflation. A  
cut in the defence budget growth rate, exacerbated by the cost of the  
war in Afghanistan, means the elimination of cherished programmes.  
"The defence budget is abysmally under-funded, which means you do set  
up tensions," says Lord Boyce, former First Sea Lord and Chief of the  
Defence Staff.

The Royal Navy, supposedly the Senior Service, is most vulnerable.  
Despite having suffered years of cuts, it finds itself under attack  
from the Army and Royal Air Force. Their targets are two new 65,000- 
ton aircraft carriers, Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, intended  
to be the centrepieces of naval operations for the next half century.  
The largest ships ordered for the Navy, they will each be able to  
carry up to 36 advanced F35 Joint Strike Fighters, and are due to be  
commissioned in 2014 and 2016. Cost: about £4 billion for the ships  
and double that for the F35s. The Navy has sold off much of the family  
silver to fund the flat-tops, accepting brutal cuts in nuclear  
submarines, destroyers and frigates.

The Army is straightforward about the carriers: it thinks they are a  
waste of money. Last month, General Dannatt dismissed them as "Cold  
War relics", unsuited for modern warfare. Also taking a pop at  
Typhoon, the RAF's new fighter, he told his audience at Chatham House:  
"I can only conclude that much of our planned investment in defence is  
at the very least of questionable relevance to the challenges we face  
now and in the future."

He said it was wrong that only 10 per cent of the equipment budget for  
the period 2003-2018 was earmarked for land systems, such as armoured  
vehicles, when the Army was doing the bulk of the fighting. The  
generals want the other Services to 'get real' and stop wasting  
billions on hi-tech virility symbols. They would like the RAF to spend  
less on fast jets and more on the transport aircraft and helicopters  
needed to convey their troops to and from the battlefield.

But the most dangerous threat to the Navy comes from the RAF. Ever  
since its formation in 1918, the youngest of the Services has sought a  
monopoly of the nation's air power. For a time during the inter-war  
period it controlled naval aviation, and in 1966s managed to sink  
CVA-01, the Navy's proposed fleet carrier. The result of the RAF's  
bureaucratic victory was the near-defeat of Britain by Argentina in  
1982 when the Navy found itself taking on an entire air force with  
just two under-sized carriers and a handful of jets.

The air marshals tried to strangle the Fleet Air Arm again this year  
by proposing to scrap the joint RAF-Navy Harrier force as a cost- 
saving measure. That would have deprived the Navy of fast-jet  
experience just as it was preparing to introduce the new carriers. The  
RAF lost the Harrier battle and they will stay in service, but Torpy,  
who has seen his planned Typhoon force cut from 232 to 123 and the new  
Nimrod fleet slashed from 22 to nine, has not given up. Last week, he  
told the Sunday Telegraph that rationalisation of the Armed Forces  
would inevitably result in the RAF controlling all Britain's combat  
jets.

"We have got to kill some sacred cows to make ourselves more  
efficient," he said – the sacred cow in question being the Fleet Air  
Arm, victor of the Falklands War.

Attacked on two fronts, the Navy has to justify itself as a long-term  
national investment – not easy when defence policy is effectively  
controlled by the Treasury, which insists on managing budgets from  
year to year. In a riposte to his fellow chiefs this month, Admiral  
Band accused them of "sea blindness" in failing to understand the  
importance of naval operations. Championing the new carriers, he said  
that, without them, Britain would sink to the status of second-rank  
naval power.

"We will always need some high-value, high-capability clubs in our  
golf bag, unless our ambition is only to play pitch and putt," he said.

But he has a problem: so much of what the Navy does is invisible. Be  
it anti-drugs patrols in the Caribbean, anti-piracy patrols off  
Somalia, mine clearance in the Persian Gulf or intelligence gathering  
by nuclear-powered attack submarines, naval operations rarely make the  
news. The Royal Marines, the Navy's infantry, have distinguished  
themselves in Afghanistan but when a television viewer sees a Marine  
he or she is likely to think Army. The contribution of Fleet Air Arm  
Harrier and helicopter pilots to the campaign is also rarely noted. If  
it flies it must be RAF.

When the Navy did make the headlines in March 2007 it was in the most  
humiliating circumstances. Fifteen Marines and sailors from the  
frigate Cornwall were captured by the Iranians while inspecting  
vessels in the Persian Gulf. Images of detainees smiling their way  
through captivity were compounded by the inexplicable decision to  
allow several to sell their stories. Nelsonian it was not.

But public relations are only a part of it. Why does Britain, which  
shed its global empire nearly a half a century ago, need a blue-water  
Navy? Why not a brown-water one, a vestigial coastal defence force?  
The answer lies in some figures.

The United Kingdom remains a crowded archipelago of 61 million people  
reliant on maritime traffic for its survival. Shipping carries 92 per  
cent of British trade, as compared to less than one per cent carried  
by air. Tanker traffic – oil, chemicals and liquefied natural gas  
(LNG) – accounts for nearly 40 per cent of total maritime trade  
movements. LNG is central to future energy needs, with imports  
expected to rise by half in three years. The British-owned merchant  
fleet may not be the colossus it once was but still weighs in at 20  
million tons. The raw materials and finished goods on which the UK  
depends must use nine global choke points which are easily blocked,  
and the country is still enmeshed in a network of treaties and  
informal arrangements requiring a naval presence. There is also the  
nuclear deterrent, a naval responsibility for 40 years..

"All truly great powers are maritime powers," says Lee Willett, senior  
naval analyst at the Royal United Services Institute. "Navies allow  
you to operate when and where you want, over the horizon or as a  
visible presence helping to prevent conflict."

Yet the Royal Navy continues to fade. There were 413 warships and  
auxiliaries in 1964 and 224 in 1982. Today's figure is 101, including  
16 patrol boats used to train university cadets. There are just 22  
operational escorts, compared to a minimum requirement of 32 set out  
in the 1997 Strategic Defence Review, and just seven (soon to be six)  
nuclear attack submarines. Numbers of minehunters have been cut  
despite the risk of a terrorist mine attack on one of Britain's 600  
ports or an Iranian mining campaign in the Gulf.

The need for adequate air defence of the fleet, learned painfully in  
the South Atlantic, has been forgotten. The Fleet Air Arm has had to  
surrender its capable Sea Harriers to save money, and the Harriers  
which fly from the two remaining small carriers, Illustrious and Ark  
Royal, are RAF ground attack types with no air-interception radar and  
no long-range air-to-air missiles. The Navy will not have an adequate  
interceptor until F35 enters service. Currently, the requirement is  
for 138 F35s for the RAF and RN but the aircraft is so expensive (more  
than the £65 million-a-piece Typhoon) that the government is not sure  
how many it can afford.

The Type 42 destroyer used to provide a second layer of air defence  
but only five of these very old ships (from the original 14 ) remain.  
They were supposed to be replaced by 12 Type 45 destroyers offering  
vastly-improved capability with the new Sea Viper missile, but the  
Type 45 programme is three-and-a-half years late and £1 billion over  
budget. Originally, 12 Type 45s were to be built but the number has  
been cut to six. For a little more money these costly ships could have  
been fitted with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, making them  
much more versatile, but the RAF blocked the idea because it  
threatened its deep-strike role. The RN's attack submarines carry  
Tomahawk but by next year there could be as few as six hunter-killers  
in service. Seven Astute-class subs are planned but the programme is  
also three-and-a-half years late and £1.2 billion over budget. The  
Navy needs a replacement for its 17 frigates but the successor Future  
Surface Combatant will not hit the water until 2019.

Fewer ships translate into more sea time for the RN's over-worked  
seamen and women. Numbers have fallen from 47,000 in 1997 to 35,000.  
The MoD wants all submarines to be based at Faslane and all destroyers  
and frigates at Portsmouth to save money. Sailors on escorts or  
submarines currently based at Plymouth must move their families, see  
them only at weekends even when not at sea, or quit.

In timeless Whitehall fashion, euphemisms pile up to mask the Navy's  
sorry state. Ships like Invincible are said to be in "extended  
readiness", meaning that they can be returned to service in an  
emergency. In practice, they would take too long to reactivate. There  
is also "capability holiday", a jolly term for the loss (supposedly  
temporary) of vital equipment and skills.

"The rather facile claim is made by ministers that the higher the  
capability of new ships, the fewer we need," says Lord Boyce. "That  
overlooks the obvious fact that if you have a ship off the west coast  
of Africa it isn't much use to you in the Persian Gulf, no matter how  
capable. The reduction in frigate and destroyer numbers means we fall  
very far short of what we need."

Admiral Band is equally blunt: "With the size of fleet, I can't go any  
more places. Turn the clock forward 20 years and we will be worrying  
about Asia and the west Pacific. If you cut the naval cake too far you  
just say, 'Okay, we won't go to the Far East.' Strategically, that  
would be incredibly stupid.''

As British seapower declines, so its place is taken by China, India,  
Russia, Brazil and others. The French navy is now arguably superior to  
its ancient rival.

"The UK is bucking the trend in reducing its naval power," says Mr  
Willett. "The Navy's case is always hard to make because its key  
attribute is prevention, and how do you prove a negative?

"You have the impossible situation in which evermore is required of  
ever less. There has been no strategic analysis of the situation  
facing the UK for more than a decade. The focus on Afghanistan risks  
strategic paralysis. Can we say that solving Afghanistan will make all  
our problems go away? If the answer is no – and it is – then  
Afghanistan cannot be the centrepiece of our security strategy."

Lord Boyce adds: "The problem about becoming totally land-centric, as  
a result of Iraq and Afghanistan, is that we focus only on today's war  
and not tomorrow's."

Critics of the carriers accuse the admirals of an old-fashioned,  
capital ship mentality.

"There is no compelling argument for spending as much as £12 billion  
on these two floating extravaganzas," says Andrew Brookes, aerospace  
analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Their  
only use is in expeditionary warfare and I cannot see a British Prime  
Minister embarking on such a war for a generation, given what we have  
gone through in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The RN can always shelter under the protection of the mighty US Navy  
carrier battle-groups, says the anti-carrier faction. But what about  
another Falklands? A never-to-be-repeated case of a British fleet  
deploying beyond the range of land-based air cover without US support,  
comes the answer.

In contrast, the Navy points to the flexibility of carriers as pieces  
of sovereign territory able to move 400 miles a day, provide support  
for land operations, act as an offshore deterrent to aggressors and  
take part in high-intensity naval war.

Contracts representing 90 per cent of construction costs of the  
carriers have been signed, which should ensure their survival. Whether  
there will be any aircraft to put on them or escorts to protect them  
is another matter.

As warship numbers decline, so does the infrastructure needed to build  
them. Unless a 'drumbeat' of orders is maintained, shipyards close and  
skilled workers move on. Warships take a decade or so to design and  
build, and cannot be conjured into existence when unforeseen events  
occur. As for America, she is expected to concentrate increasingly on  
the Pacific as Chinese power waxes, leaving Europe to fend for itself.

"If the Navy and RAF don't stop their squabbling and start living  
together the Treasury will ensure that they die together," warns the  
naval planning officer. "It is down to personalities. Glenn Torpy is a  
very divisive character."

"The general feeling is that there is no way back for the RN," says  
Steve Bush, editor of the magazine Warship World. "There has never  
been a case in recent memory when cuts have been reversed. Once  
numbers have been reduced the politicos say, 'you've managed, why do  
you need more?'"

"The Services have become the victim of their own can-do attitude,"  
says Lord Boyce. "Whatever the resources, we find a way of winning."

Maybe not for much longer. Admiral Band sums it up thus: "The  
importance of the sea to the UK will never change and our freedom to  
use the seas will remain vital in protecting our national interests.  
Only a balanced maritime force, which contains both the 'big stick' of  
the carrier to deter conflict and escorts to support it, can protect  
that freedom".

URL: http://tinyurl.com/lnyphj


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090619/8c84f437/attachment-0001.shtml 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: navy-newcastle_1425649c.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 32545 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090619/8c84f437/attachment-0003.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: RichardDannatt_1424270c.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 50595 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090619/8c84f437/attachment-0004.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Sea_lord0_1422954c.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 22419 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090619/8c84f437/attachment-0005.jpg