By Desmond Woods*
HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion were sold to Brazil this week. They were valuable national and European maritime assets, and not just for high end amphibious warfare. There are many situations where their capability at sea is irreplaceable.
History tells us that it makes good strategic sense to keep capable ships, which cannot be currently manned, in a state of good care and preservation against a time when they will be needed due to unpredictable contingencies. That option has been lost with this sale out of service of these ships with no replacements on the horizon.
Care and preservation of warships is a great deal cheaper, and more practical for swift re activation, than trying to replace them in a crisis. In this case it is envisaged by the Ministry of Defence that Albion and Bulwark’s role would be ‘replaced’ with greatly inferior roll on roll off civilian Ship(s) Taken Up From Trade. These will lack their fully equipped command and control centre, fully equipped hangar space and any capability for self-defence. Any STUFT ship, or ships, will be a poor alternative to these two highly capable platforms with flight decks ideal which are designed for helicopters and can now be also used for evolving drone warfare.
Deciding to sell off these two vessels, for insignificant sums of money, in the interest of ‘making savings’, comes from the same UK Treasury mindset that was intent on withdrawing the South Atlantic Ice Patrol Ship HMS Endurance in 1981. That decision was also made to save money and was done by the MOD, against senior officers’ advice, without any understanding of the message that this withdrawal was sending to an ambitious Argentinian dictatorship. It led to a brutal and costly war that was entirely preventable had robust deterrence and visible force maintenance in reserve been practised.
At that critical time in April 1982 it was found by inspection parties that the decommissioned Centaur Class helicopter carrier HMS Bulwark, placed in reserve in 1981, had been left to decay and be extensively cannibalised for parts. The SAS had trained with explosives on board. Consequently, the ship was no longer capable of reactivation. Her flight deck would have been very useful in the South Atlantic. There was even briefly completely impractical talk of towing this hulk to the South Atlantic to join her sister ship HMS Hermes in air operations.
Albion and Bulwark are two well-built, and recently expensively modernised RN amphibious warfare ships. They provided the Royal Marines with their platforms for rapid insertion and extraction for the last two decades. No one can rule out the requirement for this traditional operation in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East or further away. These ships were national and NATO assets and have been sold at a time when the US President is insisting that there is no US security for Europe and that the Sixth Fleet’s presence in the Mediterranean and engagement cannot be guaranteed.
I am sure that the Russian Admirals will have noted, with satisfaction, this decision by the UK MOD to remove these two versatile ships from the RN, and from Europe’s, order of battle at sea. I see this decision as another example of UK’s national failure to appreciate the scale and importance of the RN maintaining a full spectrum Navy for the defence of Britain and its European partners. This decision to lose these ships was made last year and approved by HMG. It has been implemented this year as the strategic situation in the Atlantic, Arctic and Baltic deteriorates month by month with grey zone tactics increasingly being used at sea with impunity.
If they continue to be well maintained, Albion and Bulwark will no doubt serve in the Brazilian Navy, under their new names, for at least a decade giving good service. The Brazilians are getting an ‘off the shelf’ bargain. This is coming at the expense of the UK taxpayer and European maritime deterrence and defence.
Given the apparent lack of concern for the risks entailed in parting with these ships perhaps we should be grateful that the UK MOD sold them to Brazil rather than to the Argentinian Navy. As their elder sisters, HMS Intrepid and HMS Fearless, proved in 1982, in San Carlos Water, these versatile amphibious ships are ideal for projecting force ashore while providing force protection to marines. It is arguable that they were the greatest single factor in the successful re possession of the Falklands.
Any navy aiming to serve its government with efficiency and effectiveness would be pleased to retain Albion and Bulwark’s potential for enforcing national will at sea and ashore.
*Desmond Woods OAM is an ANI Councillor
I genuinely don’t understand how this decision makes sense. If the ships aren’t economical to run why are the Brazilians buying them. If we can’t afford to run the existing ships how are we going to afford to build new ones from scratch.
As usual, the armchair admirals are doing sterling service for vague theoretical wars. Those with no responsibility to actually consider real threats, can spend all the time they like making up theoretical threats and then lambasting those who have to deal with reality, for not addressing them.
First, you completely mis-characterise the readiness level of these ships. What the Brazillians are getting is one ship that can be returned to readiness at a cost, and one that will have to be cannibalised for increasingly scarce spare parts to keep the other running.
More importantly, the time to oppose the decision to sell, was years ago, since then the RM have been reduced in size and therefore capability, the navy has been reduced in manpower, such that the RN neither had the hulls to protect its aircraft carriers, varios amphibious warfare and other support ships, and fulfil its essential patrol duties. Never-ending find the personnel to man all these vessels. It has been obvious to anyone who cared to look for two decades or more, that the navy was on this trajectory without significant additional investment. Both the money men in the MoD and senior admirals have been wedded to the idea that high tech would solve all their issues in time. A fatuous and facile argument that satisfied everyone on paper, as long as it never went further than paper. The admiralties choice to campaign hard for two aircraft carriers without addressing the huge additional cost in maintenance and manning that would be necessary was always going to require significant cuts elsewhere. Instead, interested parties decided that once it was a done deal, the MoD and Westminister at large would have to find the money, or look incompetent. They clearly didn’t consider in much depth that they might be told to find the money themselves from existing budgets with only a small uplift, barely if at all covering inflation.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but this recent decision was laid down by previous governments, endlessly selling and re-selling the ‘peace dividend’ of the Cold War.
The 1990’s was the time to be looking into the future and addressing future threats. With questions like, the USSR might be gone, but do we have a contingency plan for if Russia reverts to similar Imperialistic ways? A question that should have become more urgent a Putin demonstrated his desire to be a reborn Tsar. That was the time to say, wait a minute, we need to talk about this. But everyone who claims to ‘know’ about naval affairs was notably silent in sounding warnings about trade offs and costs. No doubt thinking the magic money tree could be shaken for a few extra quid, and that would do it.
Naval planning, probably more than any other military planning, has to be clear about future threats and the UK governments of the 21st century have been predictably unwilling to address this.
The current situation in Ukraine is an issue, precisely because it offers comparatively little for the navy to demonstrate its usefulness, being largely a land war. But, when considering threats beyond Russia in Ukraine, the navy is also hamstrung.
The UK military gave up on operating outside of Europe without the US some time ago, and in any join operation with the US, the UK would lean heavily on US logistical support, just as it did in the Gulf War 1, and 2, and Afghanistan. Even in Lybia and Syria, even though those are barely outside Europe. But that begs the question, where would Donal Trump be prepared to commit US troops, that the UK would consider supporting. I add that important caveat, because I do not believe the UK would support any of Trump’s more vocal considerations, such as Canada or Greenland, our own allies, or even Panama.
The only theatre the UK may consider supporting the US in that I can see, would be Taiwan. If the UK deployed to fight China for Taiwan, then while the Bulwark’s would potentially be useful, the lack of them would be the least of our concerns, against all of the other problems of supply, capacity, etc that our militaries face.
It’s absolutely madness. It was the same mindset when I was in the navy in1973. Labour in power. Pay was a pittance. We couldn’t go to sea for more than a week as they couldn’t afford the fuel….
Absolutely ridiculous, so short sighted
Ah. Re-run by the UK Treasury (see Edward Hampshire. The Royal Navy in the Cold War 1966-1990).
Plus ça change…