Cuts to the Royal Navy – short term savings, long term costs

The value of the Royal Navy continues to be highlighted by the crisis in Libya. Tomahawk missiles launched from submarine HMS Triumph have proved very accurate and effective and destroyed military targets with little fuss. (The case for equipping the Type 45 destroyers with Tomahawks gets stronger). Meanwhile the RAF labours to get its aircraft to the target at vast expense in fuel to deliver relatively small amounts of ordnance.Even the RAF (which has spent the last 80 years trying to undermine or abolish the Fleet Air Arm) are rumoured to have requested that the Harrier Force be re-activated along with HMS Ark Royal and sent to the Mediterranean. The Harriers would have been far better suited to operations in Libya. Not only more flexible and effective, but far cheaper than multiple air-air refueled Tornado flights from the UK or the ‘eye-watering’ charges Italy is making for use of its airbases.HMS Invincible went to the knackers yard in Turkey last week (having spent the last 5 years stripped of spares and rotting in Portsmouth dockyard while the MoD deceptively listed her as part of ‘the active fleet’) She sailed past Ark Royal which has also been stripped of useful equipment (with suspicious haste) as soon as she decommissioned and is being flogged online. Meanwhile Nelson is spinning in his grave as the French navy is able to deploy the large fixed-wing aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle while Britain might have something similar in around 10 years.

HMS Cumberland has been part of the naval blockade of Libya but will shortly be relived by HMS Liverpool (incidentally HMS Liverpool is 7 years older than Cumberland) so she can sail home to her delayed decommissioning. The Government continues to defy all reasonable logic and ploughs on in the face of events, refusing to abandon plans to scrap the 4 very capable Type 22 frigates. Amidst the news that the MoD has wasted at least £6 Billion on scrapped defence assets, HMS Campbeltown decommissioned this week, despite completing a major refit this year and being readied to deploy to the Indian Ocean.

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