Good news on Royal Fleet Auxiliary tankers lost in controversy
4 badly needed ships
It may be big come-down from the original plans for a 2.5 £Billion programme of 12 ships, but there was some good news on 22nd February for the Royal Navy when it was announced that the MoD had placed an order for 4 new replenishment tankers. The ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) that can re-supply warships with fuel, food and stores at sea allow the RN to reach across the globe, be self-sustaining and able to remain at sea for long periods. In particular, the new aircraft carriers will need a tanker in regular attendance to supply her and the thirsty air group with aviation fuel. Like the RN, the RFA has been in sharp decline and has not received any new replenishment vessels since 2003. It has just 6 ships left that can supply oil to warships at sea, 2 x modern ‘Wave’ class tankers, the multi-purpose RFA Fort Victoria, 2 small elderly ‘Rover’ class tankers and RFA Orangeleaf. Other than the 2 ‘Wave’ class tankers, the RFA fleet does not conform to modern double-hull safety standards and are in urgent need of replacement.
British shipbuilding: a job creation scheme or a strategic necessity?
The news that the 4 tankers will be constructed abroad has caused uproar. In our society that is so disconnected from our forces and navy in particular, there were few positive responses from politicians, unions or media, rather self-interested hysteria about “betrayal of British workers”. In fact no British shipbuilder had bid for the contract, knowing they could not possibly match the price. The company managing the project is British (BMT Support) and some 150 £million will be spent in the UK but the ships will be assembled in South Korea. Basically it is the right decision, given the lack of funds and the sorry state of UK shipbuilding. Highly efficient yards employing cheap labour in the Far East virtually ended UK commercial shipbuilding a long time ago. The slow death of UK shipbuilders since the 1960s was caused by a combination of militant and childish behaviour by unions and complacent management lacking the vision and drive to modernise. The yards that remain survive largely on building sophisticated ships & submarines for the Royal Navy. If governments past and present had the foresight to treat both the Royal Navy and shipbuilders as national strategic assets by placing regular orders at regular intervals, then the yards could invest and plan, making them more efficient. Instead it has been a story of feast or famine, successive governments ordering in fits and starts when politically and fiscally convenient for them. Currently the carrier programme is keeping the UK yards busy (fortunately so large they could be built in separate sections, thus spreading the workload across multiple sites). When the yards involved in the in the early parts of the carrier programme get near to completing their work, there will be further uncertainty as the Type 26 Frigate programme will not generate enough work for all of them. BAe Systems is actively considering closing its Portsmouth shipyard and unbelievably, the MoD would have to pay BAe £600 million in ‘compensation’ to close the yard, making 1,500 highly skilled workers redundant.
Because of this lack of strategic thinking, the MARS tanker project neatly encapsulates the short-term dilemma often being faced by the MoD – should they either ‘buy British’ to preserve jobs and industry or prioritise the needs of the forces (and the hard pressed tax-payer) when better value for money can often be found overseas? The £425 million price tag for 4 ships represents very good value and no UK shipyard could hope to compete. Its is not really a fair comparison but a UK-built Type 45 destroyer cost around £1Billion, whereas these 4 large ships are being built for less than half that cost of a single destroyer. It is also interesting to note the RAF’s parallel ‘Future Strategic Tanker’ air-to-air refuelling project will cost a staggering 10.5 £billon over it’s lifetime for 12 aircraft.
Life on MARS?
MARS is the ridiculous acronym for the “Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability” programme which was started back in 2003 and was supposed to produce a family of 12 ships to replace a variety of ageing RFAs to be delivered by 2012. The RFA is relatively ‘low-profile’ so when there was a hunt for easy cost savings, it was obvious the cancellation of the MARS programme would cause minimal political fall-out. By 2007 it was clear that the project would not be properly funded and it was cancelled in Dec 2008. It is only now that a part of the original MARS project has been resuscitated and the first orders have been placed. This order is only for tankers and the rest of the RFA fleet has no replacements in sight.
A much-loved fleet of geriatrics doing the work of warships
With the RN so over-stretched in the last decade, RFAs have increasingly been doing work that would once have been done by frigates or destroyers. RFA Fort Rosalie is currently in the Caribbean to offer support to Islands in the event of natural disasters and patrolling against drug traffickers. The large flight deck and hangars provide an excellent base for 1 or more RN helicopters and a Royal Marine detachment. RFA Fort Victoria recently completed a very successful spell on anti-piracy patrol in the Indian Ocean. Although slow and rather unwieldy, the RFAs have been able to adapt to these ‘policing’ roles. They are gradually being fitted with more light armament and their crews are adapting from their merchant navy background to be more like the RN. While they live in far greater comfort than the RN sailor, in many ways the RFA sailor takes a bigger risk, living aboard a lightly armed ship loaded with oil or explosives. Various studies have looked at ‘privatising’ the RFA but sanity has so far prevailed and always concluded the RFA actually provides great value for money and take risks that regular merchant ships would never consider.
While it’s true that the simpler ships of the RFA do not become obsolete as quickly as warships, older ships are less reliable, harder to maintain and often don’t meet modern maritime safety standards. Apart from the 2 wave class and the 3 modern Bay class ships (which are amphibious ships), the RFA fleet is ageing fast. With the premature decommissioning of RFA Fort George, the RFA has just 3 ships capable of supplying solid stores and ammunition at sea and 2 of these ships are doughty Falklands war veterans and well over 30 years old. 2 other key vessels, RFA Argus and RFA Diligence were both originally chartered for the Falklands war in 1982 and are also over 30 years old. RFA Diligence offers an important forward repair capability to the RN and is primarily used to support RN submarines deployed for long periods in the Gulf and Indian Ocean. RFA Argus is a large aviation training ship with a modern medical facility and in emergency could also be used a makeshift helicopter carrier. If the RN is not to lose a significant element of its support, then orders for replacements of these other ageing ships must be placed soon.
Related articles
- DSME to build new Royal Navy tankers (motorship.com)
- MoD rejected offer to build the Navy’s tankers in Britain (dailymail.co.uk)
- Defence Secretary responds to criticism over Navy tankers order (MoD)
Asking the Navy to do more and more with less and less
HMS Ocean - Image via Wikipedia
Just at the very moment that the decisions of the October 2010 “Strategic Defence Review” start to bite, the Royal Navy is being asked by government to do more than ever. With the crisis in Libya and the Middle East showing no signs of ending, RN warships are spread thin across the globe. A quick snapshot of the fleet shows the pace of operations. With such a tiny fleet, our naval ports are almost empty and there are few vessels able to provide reliefs should the Libya crisis continue or escalate.
RN ships involved in Operation Ellamy off Libya include HMS Ocean, HMS Albion, HMS Sutherland, HMS Liverpool, HMS Brocklesby and HMS Bangor and HMS Triumph. The RFA is playing an increasing role with RFA Fort Rosalie, RFA Wave Knight supporting them. RFA Argus, RFA Fort Victoria and RFA Cardigan Bay are ready off Yemen should UK citizens need to be evacuated. RN patrols in the Arabian Gulf continue (as they have since 1980) with HMS St Albans sailing this week to relieve HMS Iron Duke in addition to the 4 permanently deployed RN minehunters in the Gulf. HMS Richmond is involved in exercises in the Far East and HMS Edinburgh has sailed to relieve HMS York in the South Atlantic along with HMS Scott. RFA Wave Ruler is in the Caribbean ready to provide relief in case of hurricanes.
In the last few months the RN has paid off submarine HMS Trafalgar, aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, 4 frigates; HMS Cornwall, HMS Chatham, HMS Campbeltown, & Cumberland and 2 destroyers; HMS Manchester & HMS Gloucester, 3 auxiliaries; RFA Fort George, RFA Largs Bay & RFA Bayleaf. Of the few new vessels joining the fleet, the 3 new Type 45 destroyers are not ready to be deployed on operations and submarine HMS Astute’s epic sea trails have been dogged by bad luck. The only other ship to join the RN is HMS Protector – a Norwegian ice-breaker which should be a good replacement for HMS Endurance.
It would appear that the Navy is actually indispensable to this government (like all before) who are tasking it with more and more. This tempo can be maintained for a short time but is not sustainable as there is simply no back up. More pressure is being put on ageing ships for which no replacements are forthcoming and personnel are being worked harder, some even under threat of redundancy. It is shameful that the government will not reverse the defence cuts in the light of events, and is grinding our forces down with over-work and under investment.
Related articles
- Marines on UK Yemen exit standby (bbc.co.uk)
- Libya: HMS Brocklesby destroys mine in Masrati port (waronterrornews.typepad.com)
- Britain says military assets deployed near Yemen (telegraph.co.uk)
