Today marks another important milestone in the regeneration of the Royal Navy. Last week it was the naming of HMS Glasgow, our new Type 26 anti-submarine frigate. Today, it is the roll out of HMS Venturer, the first Type 31 general purpose frigate: a class of ships that, if we get it right, could form the backbone of the Royal Navy for the foreseeable future. That we have two major Defence Primes building ships on both Scottish coasts at the same time is good news on many levels.
To understand the Type 31 two things must be noted from the top.
The first is simple – there is a severe lack of cash. The Strategic Defence Review (SDR), due any minute, will talk in lofty terms about the sorts of things this ship will be needed for, but will also not uplift defence spending beyond “increasing to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027”. This is not enough money to fix our current woes, much less prepare for war. There will be further in-year cuts between now and then.
The second thing is more conceptual but equally important. Navies spend 98 per cent of their time not fighting. Assuring the trade on which our country depends for its survival is a long game of influence, policing, diplomacy, allied cooperation and so on. Ideally the entire job would be done by fully capable war-fighting platforms: carriers, Type 26 anti-submarine frigates, destroyers, nuclear submarines etc. But these things are very expensive and we cannot afford enough of them to do everything. So we need something more affordable to give us some more hulls.
The special forces count their most expensive and exquisitely trained operators – the SAS, the SBS and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment – as “Tier One”. But nobody would suggest that their second tier, the Special Forces Support Group, are not extremely impressive. If a fully equipped destroyer or anti-submarine frigate is a Tier One warship, a Type 31 is Tier Two; and just as with the SFSG, we’ll be very glad to have them.
Today marks another important milestone in the regeneration of the Royal Navy. Last week it was the naming of HMS Glasgow, our new Type 26 anti-submarine frigate. Today, it is the roll out of HMS Venturer, the first Type 31 general purpose frigate: a class of ships that, if we get it right, could form the backbone of the Royal Navy for the foreseeable future. That we have two major Defence Primes building ships on both Scottish coasts at the same time is good news on many levels.
To understand the Type 31 two things must be noted from the top.
The first is simple – there is a severe lack of cash. The Strategic Defence Review (SDR), due any minute, will talk in lofty terms about the sorts of things this ship will be needed for, but will also not uplift defence spending beyond “increasing to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027”. This is not enough money to fix our current woes, much less prepare for war. There will be further in-year cuts between now and then.
The second thing is more conceptual but equally important. Navies spend 98 per cent of their time not fighting. Assuring the trade on which our country depends for its survival is a long game of influence, policing, diplomacy, allied cooperation and so on. Ideally the entire job would be done by fully capable war-fighting platforms: carriers, Type 26 anti-submarine frigates, destroyers, nuclear submarines etc. But these things are very expensive and we cannot afford enough of them to do everything. So we need something more affordable to give us some more hulls.
The special forces count their most expensive and exquisitely trained operators – the SAS, the SBS and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment – as “Tier One”. But nobody would suggest that their second tier, the Special Forces Support Group, are not extremely impressive. If a fully equipped destroyer or anti-submarine frigate is a Tier One warship, a Type 31 is Tier Two; and just as with the SFSG, we’ll be very glad to have them.