A Bay Class LPD(A), arguably one of the most versatile vessels in the inventory with a running cost of £17m per year

or

A River Class Offshore Patrol Vessel, with a running cost of £20m per year.

Yep, you guessed it, the Royal Navy decided to keep an Offshore Patrol Vessel and decommission one of the Bay class.

Running costs are here

A cynic might point to the Bay being an RFA vessel, no RN command slots, and the Rivers being provided as part of a long term PFI contract as significant factors in the decision.

Puts the multi billion pound aid budget, EU budget increases and the Irish banking bailout into context, doesn’t it.

There are many suggestions in the comments placed on other articles on this site that run along the lines that UK (in the form of the Royal Navy) cannot afford “gold plated” warships, so it needs many, smaller cheaper vessels and that to remain relevant in the modern world, it needs to focus the use of these smaller vessels on missions such as “fighting piracy” – my pilot response to most of these suggestions in not printable!

Let me provide some background reading before going any further.

If you don’t know the Eagle Speak blog, its author, Eagle 1 (an ex-USNR Captain) does an excellent job of tracking piracy, and has been doing for a long time before Somalia become the media’s focus

Eagle 1 works with CDR Salamander (another active blogger) to produce the “Midrats” naval podcast over BlogTalk Radio; they recently interviewed Mr Stephen Carmel, a Senior Vice President with Maersk USA.  It is an excellent interview even though it has an obvious US centric view of piracy, commerce and shipbuilding.

Mr Carmel also recently gave a speech at a USNI conference where he suggested that piracy is simply not that big an issue from the commercial viewpoint; you can read the transcript here

As Mr Carmel points out, Navies may have long histories in fighting piracy, and other crime upon the high seas, but the operative word here is history. Piracy is not a military threat, to the UK or any other nation for that matter. Piracy is a law and order issue; do we call in the local TA battalion to deal with armed robbers or potential armed siege situations? No of course not, we call on appropriately trained and armed police – a civilian agency.

So I would like to examine a few points, and make a few of those modest suggestions, but lets start with the contentious stuff:

1. The role of the Royal Navy is war fighting, military operations, not global maritime policeman
2. BUT having said that, people who constantly moan about using T45’s (for example) for anti-piracy or anti-drug ops are missing the point: if we have such assets why not use them ? Would you rather they just sit alongside doing nothing at all?
3. Building on point 2 – warships can do maritime policing, but generally speaking maritime policemen (coastguard type OPV’s for example) are not much use in war fighting
4. The SDSR is actually divesting of assets that are very useful in maritime security type operations – more on this below.

Lets work this backwards a bit first, to get the modest suggestion for the RN out of the way.  If we do not accept that just letting commercial market forces (the maritime and insurance industries) deal with piracy is sufficient, and that for moral reasons we should intervene, then we should use the assets we already have to accomplish the mission.

So instead of mothballing one of the Albion class assault ships, we should make a modest investment in CB90 type vessels which can operate from the well deck on anti-piracy patrols. Now I accept the Albion Class are less than perfect, not having a hanger for their own helo, but perhaps we could attach a Bay Class style temporary shelter for a Lynx. However the main point is, a CB90 with its mix of range, endurance, speed and payload, its own radar, and even a cabin roof RWS with a 12.7mm MG is excellent small vessel for anti-piracy patrols closer into shore, with much cheaper operating costs than a Merlin HM1.

A previous TD article on the CB90 is here

Obviously the same combination would be quite good for anti-drug use in the Caribbean or anti-people smuggling in the Mediterranean. In the “West Indies Guards Ship” role, which has already been undertaken by the smaller Bay Class, the ability to carry large amounts of disaster relief supplies and equipment during hurricane season is an added boon!

Maritime Security Operations – Fleet versus Flotilla

OK, so now its time for that rather modest proposal I mentioned…………

If piracy, drug running and people smuggling are not a direct military threat to the UK, but a civilian ‘security’ issue, then perhaps we should leave it to the Coast Guard?  No, seriously, stop laughing….!

I know the UK Maritime and Coast Guard Agency is not exactly built on the same model as the US Coast Guard for example, and is not setup for such missions, but we have a successful model, which can be adopted: the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

While writing this article, I seem unable to get to the main RFA site, which might have something to do with the recent hack, so for those who don’t know a great deal about the RFA, check out the Wikipedia page

The RFA might be described as a “para-military” organization. They are the supporting element of the maritime armed forces, what in the days of sail used to be termed the Flottilla, as opposed to the Fleet(s) of combatant vessels. The RFA is manned by civilian merchant mariners and supply specialists. The RFA has for many years been a model other countries have envied,  and personally I have spent 9 months working as part of the Naval Party onboard RFA Diligence and have a very high opinion of their professionalism, particularly the bridge ‘watch keeping’ officers I worked with.

So why not use the RFA model to undertake ‘coast guard type’ maritime security operations, both in UK waters, and further abroad?

Currently the RN operates 3 River Class patrol vessels, and there is a current opportunity to purchase 3 Port of Spain class vessels built for Trinidad and Tobago

Port of Spain Class

FantasyFleets has made a similar suggestion

The difference is I am suggesting these vessels be sailed under the Blue Ensign as part of the RFA, either ‘straight up’ as part of the Flotilla, or on behalf of the Maritime and Coast Guard Agency – personally I don’t care if they are grey, white, blue or whether or not they have ‘go faster’ stripes.

The existing Rivers should be transferred to the RFA and manned and operated in the same way.  In UK waters Fisheries officers could be carried, and Customers officers in the same way.  In the Caribbean or off Somalia I would suggest the boarding parties should be made up of Royal Marines

Using the RFA to provide this capability is only part of the response to a dwindling MoD budget though. The other element would be to take the Italian approach to funding; these maritime security ops could be financed in part by MCGA, Revenue and Customs, DfID etc not just from the MoD budget. If we accept that this is not a ‘war fighting’ role, why should they be funded by the MoD at all ?

Bigger is better

However, why stop there ? As I have suggested, I am not a big fan of smaller less flexible vessels, so lets go to the other extreme and examine the use of really big RFA’s for these maritime security operations.

As the RN surface fleet has shrunk, RFA tankers and the auxiliary landing ships of the Bay Class have been used on the ‘Windies Guard Ship’ and other duties. While some have questioned the veracity of using a tanker to do anti-drug runner ops’ I say “so what?” – it’s a flexible asset, use it for whatever you can J

TD’s pre-SDSR article on ‘At Sea Replenishment’ mentions the Dutch Joint Support Ship design

In my complimentary article, I suggested we should join the JSS program and buy at least 4 of these large and flexible vessels to replace all 4 RFA Fort Class vessels

In fact in the comments (some where) I went further than this, based on TD’s relentless pursuit of educating us all to be experts in ISO Container based logistics, to suggest that perhaps another 2 could replace RFA Argus and RFA Diligence, and again following the Italian model, a 7^th of class could be purchased purely for disaster response operations – paid for by DfID of course !

Now I realize these vessels are not that cheap (although relatively speaking they are certainly not that expensive either – c. 360 million Euro so 305 million GBP) but beating TD’s drum of standardization the benefits of having a large class of identical vessels (which would also reduce this unit price) would be great.

But what does all this have to do with anti-piracy or other maritime security operations?

Well many graphics of the JSS design show a LCVP type vessel on davits, port and starboard aft – if these were to be replaced by CB90’s we are back to my earliers suggestion of using Albion Class, we are talking about ‘mother ships’ – but in this case RFA vessels that have a big hanger to carry their own helicopters, two CB90’s on davits (plus RHIB’s of course) and even enough room on the cargo deck to build a containerized brig for your captured pirates.

So a single class of vessel which can act as tanker, dry stores support, helo training, support and transport, repair ship (remember the TD article about containerized workshops?) AND as a maritime security operations mother ship !

So whether you like big multi-role, or if your in the “lots of smaller hulls” school of thought, what do you think about giving this expanded role to the RFA ?

The first couple of posts are from guest contributors…

Privatising the Royal Fleet Auxiliary – pragmatic or problematic?

For those of you who do not know, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) is a civilian-manned fleet of the MoD which enables ships of the Royal Navy to maintain their operational requirements around the world.

The RFA’s primary role is to supply the Royal Navy with fuel and supplies. It also counts a repair ship, and amphibious assault vessels amongst its assets. RFA personnel are members of the MoD civil service who wear Merchant Navy-style rank insignia with naval uniforms and are under naval discipline when the vessel is engaged on warlike operations. RFA vessels are commanded and crewed by civilians, augmented with regular and reserve Royal Navy personnel to perform specialised military functions such as operating and maintaining helicopters or providing hospital facilities.

The RFA is funded out of the defence budget and its employees are counted amongst the 85,730 civil servants currently employed by the MoD.

Before going into detail about the virtues and vices of the privatisation proposal, consider first why it has been given so little attention in the main stream media.

Firstly the Army gets most attention currently which is only natural given the dire, albeit, kinetic situation in Afghanistan – with the government looking ever so amateurish with every new procurement announcement.

Secondly very few people actually know that the RFA exists as an organisation. It is a tiny organisation, relatively speaking, when compared to the likes of the RN and employes only 2,000 where the latter employes 80,000 – active and reserve. Neither does it have a particularly long military history by British standards, being established as recently as 1905 (the RN has been going since the 16th century) . When all is taken into account it is no surprise that this issue is making little noise on the mainstream airwaves.

The RFA has and remains a very active service in terms of deployment and ship building.

They recently (2006) received a batch of Bay-class landing ship docks and what is more are leasing Point class sealift ships under the Private Finance Initiative. Hence it is a very new fleet and at first glance it seems like a very odd suggestion to privatise it – this is without even considering the security related issues.

First consider the financial aspect; the RFA employes 2,000 and operates a grand total of 16 ships. According to the Times each department head at the MoD has been asked to identify savings of at least 10% resulting in a saving of £200m – by Christmas. The most expensive part of running the RFA comes from personnel costs; though they are few they are highly skilled at what they do.

Refuelling a destroyer at sea, whilst moving, is no mean feat.

Only two years ago a survey was completed on the RN and/or Civilian Firms taking on the role of the RFA. The RN found they could not man the Bay Class ship for example, with less than 200 (RFA – 91) and the Civilian firms could not man the RFA ships with crews holding the required Military and civilian qualifications, let alone continue with the in-house training (provided by the MOD(N) and sea colleges).

Thus, while flogging of the entire service remains on the table, it appears that it would be a very problematic option in terms of who exactly would take it over.

Financially it is cheaper to keep it in-house since privatisation is always run for a profit and margins will be added to the bill handed to the MoD.

A different plan which has been suggested is merging the RFA with the RN.

This plan, though attractive to financial reasons, has its drawbacks as well. The problem with incorporation is that many RFA personnel are in the RFA as they do not want to be in the RN (though it also contains a lot of ex-RN). Merge the two together, and watch UK merchant seaman join other firms.

Additionally, the RFA is the single largest employer of UK merchant seamen – lose this and you ring the death knell of the Merchant Navy – no matter how persuasive the logic may be.

However considering the continuing swing towards militarisation of the RFA over the last 40 or so years perhaps full integration into the RN as is done in many other countries, may be more sensible from the operational point and still provide cost savings. Certainly from a political point of view the latter option is very attractive, particularly with the Conservatives. MoD civil servants may well recommend to Mr. Cameron that the RFA becomes RN; he can then fulfil his pledge of cutting MoD civil service numbers whilst boosting RN hull numbers and personnel.

This is of course assuming that Liam Fox, Shadow Defence Secretary, was serious about cutting MoD costs by 25% but boosting operational forces, they have to find thousands of people to sack (it would be interesting to see if that becomes a manifesto commitment, but it is independent of any future Treasury review).

Finally one must remember that this story was provided first by the mainstream media who are looking for a sensationalist ‘bash-the-government-story’ and they are hence, by their nature, going to strangle the cat in the bag before it is even let out. Savings must be made since the current government has been living well above its means for the past few years and when (if) the Tories enter office there will be a lot of cuts, as a result civil servants and senior military brass will consider short-term cuts which look good on paper for the incoming government, so that they in turn can tell the electorate that they can be trusted.

However privatising the RFA is not a short-term cut and if enacted would mean that every other possibility was either not financially or politically plausible. Cuts are coming but most likely not to frontline personnel (not to mention operational personnel) hence we can but wait and see what precisely Dr. Fox meant when he said

“Frederick Duke of York was preparing for the Napoleonic threat between 1792 and 1804 he increased the size of the Army from 50,000 to 500,000 – and he did it with 38 staff in Horse Guards.”