Third Correspondence

This is the last in a series of replies to questions asked (and consequently may read as a series of unconnected points):

"Merlin was one of the great tragicomedies of defence procurement.

Having spent thousands of millions of pounds developing the finest medium helicopter in the world we then order only a handful of them resulting in the manufacturer being bought out by the Italians.

Worse still,instead of building multirole airframes in quantity we have naval helicopters with no rear ramp and de-navalised transport variants all made in small quantities.

The mixed helicopter fleet is a big problem for the captain of a Type 45 destroyer.

With no onboard anti-submarine and anti-ship capability he might choose to have a Merlin on board but then his helicopter will lack surface search and attack capability.

If he has a Lynx,he gets anti-ship capability but with very limited anti-submarine capability and less capability in all the other roles ship's helicopters perform.

If there is a wrong way to do procurement,you can almost guarantee the Ministry of Defence will find it.

Anti submarine ships are already all rounders with anti aircraft capability,they have to be as submarines fire missiles.

The destroyer simply has a more capable anti-aircraft system with anti-submarine capability reduced on cost grounds.

But designing,manufacturing and operating one class of ships and one anti-aircraft system  would more than offset those costs,the Americans build multirole ships,given our patrol tasks,we need them too.

Regarding guns,I set out some of my thoughts on this in the "optimum calibres" thread.

I believe a 5.5"/140mm rifled gun should be developed for use by the Royal Navy,Royal Artillery and Royal Armoured Corps and ideally other nations.

I won't repeat the arguments here but a higher ballistic coefficient and economically viable production numbers are important considerations.

For indirect fire the requirement is for unassisted projectiles to be efffective to at least the 20 mile sensor horizon of a large surface combatant.

What I think of as a landing ship is far removed from those small dock ships used at present,it is a large,simple,cheap vessel intended to transport,land and resupply a brigade sized force.

I based it around one ship moving a brigade of 4,000 men,400 heavy tracked vehicles and 1,600 Twenty foot Equivalent Units (T.E.U.) of light vehicles,supplies and equipment in a single lift with the neccessary lighterage to land the force.

I estimated that would be enough for 30 days combat operations by the brigade.

One large ship can carry all that to the Gulf in less than one week.

Having 30 days of combat supplies on hand gives the ship plenty of time to go home,reload and return from anywhere in the world before the brigade starts to run short of things.

A six ship fleet (with one in refit) can move a 20,000 strong heavy division in one lift at very low cost.

By way of comparison,during Operation Telic in 2003,the British army deployed 32,000 men to Kuwait with 15,000 vehicles,15,000 tonnes of ammunition and 6,800 containers in 10 weeks using 78 ships and 360 aircraft sorties.

Aircraft carriers originally had axial decks and it did not matter which side the island was on.

The Japanese built carriers with islands on both the port and starboard sides.

However,as the machinery was located in the depths of the ship amidships,the uptakes (and hence island) had to be amidships to minimise the weight and volume they take up.

Angled deck ships were originlly modifications of axial deck ships and the angle naturally was placed opposite the island.

Subsequent ships designed from the start with angled decks also had amidships machinery and uptakes and so had a similar layout.

Nuclear vessels could have had the island in a different position but were essentially nuclear evolutions of the conventional ships which preceeded them.

The Americans are moving the island aft for the latest Ford class but have kept it to starboard as the Fords use the area aft of the angle for the waist catapult.

A two catapult ship however,can use this space for the island but it is only practical if they also have electric propulsion which gives greater freedom in locating the turbine generators thus reducing the volume required for ducts.

If I was made First Sea Lord tomorrow,the first thing I would do would be to wish I had been given that job ten years earlier!

The biggest problems for the Royal Navy and other services are nothing to do with shipbuilding.

Structural problems have been created in defence procurement by recent industrial consolidation and European defence procurement initiatives.

The rational consequence of these changes is a dramatic reduction in British defence spending.

This is the biggest strategic problem facing the armed forces and sorting that out would be my first priority.

Secondly,there are a number of other problems in British defence procurement which have directly caused the reduction in force size which we have at present.

The most expensive thing in the defence budget is not a ship,an aircraft or a tank programme.

It is a lack of foresight.

For example,the lack of foresight which led to the Typhoon being developed as a land only aircraft caused us to contribute £2,000 Million towards the development of the F35.

A similar lack of foresight can be seen in most of our defence programmes.

Then there is the constant desire for "bespoke to role" weapons,sensors and platforms.

For example,we spent about £1,700 Million developing a large,British built,four engined aircraft with a payload of 60 tonnes of fuel and ordnance.

However,because this was a bespoke to role maritime patrol aircraft,not only was it produced in uneconomic quantities but we also had to contribute about £1,600 Million to the development of a large four engined aircraft which could carry 70 tonnes of fuel and cargo.

Again,we see the desire for bespoke to role everything across the board in defence procurement.

Last but by no means least there is financial mismanagement.

Typically we make "savings" which result in increased spending in future years.

This results in even greater savings being needed in future which again results in vastly increased spending in future years.

For example,in order to make short term savings on the new aircraft carriers,they were delayed,resulting in increased spending of £700 Million in the future.

Having mentioned only a handful of projects,we already have £4,300 Million wasted from the defence budget,enough to buy about 215 Merlin helicopters.

Getting back to ship building we already have the design and build capacity for the fleet I specified.

The great advantage of having fewer classes is that there is less design work to do and building can be done more quickly.

My programme would include one frigate a year,one large ship every two years and one submarine every two years over a thirty two year period.

That is little different to what we are producing at the moment.

The difference is in the schedulding.

We currently have an inconsistent build schedule.

Builders have to layoff engineers and technicians when they are short of work.

We then give them a whole raft of new vessels to design and build in a short timescale.

They then have to recruit new,inexperienced people who learn on the job making mistakes at tax payers expense.

As a consequence of this expense we can afford to order no more ships,the yards run out of work,people are laid off and the whole cycle begins again.

This is incredibly expensive way of doing things.

We cannot afford it.

We need a long term ship building plan with a constant flow of design and build work.

Which is why the prospect of outsourcing the new M.A.R.S. tankers is a really bad idea.

Replenishment ships,amphibious ships and aircraft carriers should all be in the same "big ship build cycle" to maintain capacity and reduce costs over the whole fleet.

I would probably scrap M.A.R.S. and come up with a coherent "big ship" plan.

I would also scrap C1 and C2 Future Surface Combatant and replace it with a single "F class" frigate programme (Falkland,Finisterre,Fame,Fortune,Fearless,Furious,Falcon,Fox,Frobisher,Fitzroy etc.).

I would talk to the people who came up with Venator about future sloops and brigs.

Venator was a lousy design compromised at every turn by it's limited displacement.

However,much of the thinking behind it was sound.

With a bigger hull,bigger boats,a full sized gun and more speed,range,endurance and accommodation,there is the potential for a big,cheap but very useful vessel for many minor tasks to replace the rather limited minor warships we have at present.

There are major issues with our missile procurement.

While Common Anti-Air Missile is a huge step in the right direction,it does not go far enough.

We need a true multipurpose missile (A.S.R.A.A.M. actually had a proposed air to surface variant called Typhoon).

Had we developed such a thing in the past we could have saved at least £2,000 Million in recent years.

If we develop such a thing now,there will be no need to spend money Future Air to Surface Guided Weapon and we will get a much enhanced capability for our ground troops and surface ships.

It is not the West which is behind in missile technology so much as the United Kingdom.

We are well behind other industrialised nations in anti-ballistic missile defence for example.

With the proliferation of ballistic and high speed cruise missiles,this is a major strategic weakness for a nation which currently relies on,large fixed land and air bases for expeditionary war fighting.

Tragically,having allowed our missile manufacturing base to fall into foreign hands,it is now difficult to justify spending money in this area on economic or security of supply grounds."

Second Correspondence

Following my first reply,I was asked further questions to which the following was my response:

"the ability to deploy a radar at high altitude is very advantageous.

In support of air combat assets which might be operating a thousand miles from the carrier,this can only practically be done by fixed wing platforms.

For ship defence,helicopters and aerostats become possibilities.

Cost and technical risk make an unmanned platform look unlikely for this role at present.

Without over the horizon radar,surface ships cannot detect an attack,let alone counter it until the missile is very close,typically about 15 miles away.

Modern anti-ship missiles fly at three times the speed of sound,the next generation may be faster.

That gives very little reaction time,too little in the event of multiple incoming missiles.

Defending in such a situation is difficult,if something is difficult to do,it is usually expensive to do.

Our warfighting capability is defined by money.

We end up with very expensive warships like the Type 45 which can defend only a very small area at low level.

On the other hand,aircraft are usually cheaper to buy than ships but also much more expensive to operate.

Some figures put the cost per flying hour of a Typhoon at £90,000.

At that rate,keeping just two aircraft on combat air patrol would cost about £1,600 Million a year.

You could probably operate about thirty destroyers for that money with perhaps ten of those kept at sea all the time.

This is why the Falklands is defended by just two Typhoons on ground alert,maintaining a combat air patrol or keeping a radar early warning aircraft airborne would just cost too much.

Surface ships are very good at persistence but the aircraft give superior radar horizon.

This makes ships very good at sustained defence and aircraft very good at surging for major warfighting,together they work very well.

It would be far cheaper to have one or the other but that would create vulnerabilities.

We could not afford to keep aircraft above the carrier all the time and the destroyer would not be able to survive in high threat environments without the carrier aircraft.

For the same reason,surface ships are needed for routine patrols.

These could be done by cheaper brigs but they would be vulnerable to any hostile force with a point to prove.

A general purpose frigate can take on a limited hostile force at least and defend the carrier when things become more serious.

Using frigates for patrol also allows them to gain experience and to pick up things that a brig would miss,like the chinese submarine which bumped into an American destroyer recently.

The key is balance,the Royal Navy tried to buy an extremely unbalanced force.

Originally it was planning to spend four times as much money on twelve destroyers as it was going to spend on two aircraft carriers (and ended up spending much the same budget on two carriers and six destroyers).

Given that the carriers are usually the most useful warfighting asset and that the destroyers were only a small part of the surface fleet,I would suggest that they got their priorities wrong.

Surface ships are useful but their cost must be in proportion to their utility.

It is this proportionality which is the problem with the Type 45 destroyer.

At £6,600 Million for just six ships,they look extremely expensive.

However,that is the programme cost.

The production cost is about £650 Million per ship which is about half what the Americans are paying for the latest Arleigh Burke class destroyers and much the same as the latest Spanish destroyer.

The often criticised British defence industry is much better than many give it credit for.

Because the Type 45 has a bespoke to role air defence suite,thousands of millions of pounds were added to the programme costs.

Had these costs been spread over the whole surface fleet,or even across other services,that would have been a justifiable expense.

For just twelve air defence destroyers it was an unjustifiable extravagance.

Spread over the six strong class which was eventually ordered,this added hundreds of millions of pounds to each ship.

Similarly the small production run prevented significant economies of scale from being realised.

These factors led to the high programme unit cost.

The Type 45s utility was restricted by it's air defence only role.

The end result of high cost and limited roles is a class whose cost is out of all proportion to their utility.

This penny packeting of surface combatant production also has knock on effects on other future surface combatants.

With six destroyers in the fleet,the future frigates will be built in smaller numbers at higher unit costs.

These problems cannot all be blamed on the navy,the fragmented British missile programme left them little choice but to contribute to the development of an all new missile system.

Had there existed a coherent tri-service missile procurement doctrine,not only would the Type 45s have looked far better value for money but thousands of millions of pounds would have been saved over the last decade.

At present we have about 330 fast jets costing an average of £11 Million a year each.

About 200 of those are with 15 frontline squadrons,the rest with training units or in mainteance or storage.

A quarter of that 200 are engaged in air defence.

That leaves 150 aircraft for expeditionary warfighting.

We can make significant financial savings by using the carrier's sortie generating advantage to "do airpower" with fewer carrier based aircraft.

To avoid risking all our expeditionary airpower on one ship,we would ideally have at least two carrier wings.

As air wings go down in size,so does their efficiency and the number of ships,and hence cost,required to deploy them goes up.

Keeping the number of wings to a practical minimum number and maximum size is then desireable.

Carrier wings cannot be at sea permanently so rotating them with the land based wing is also a good idea,which suggests the land based wing and the carrier based wing should be the same 50 strong size. 

If we have two 50 strong carrier wings,we make significant financial savings which more than pay for the carriers while generating more airpower than we could from land bases.

I consider this to be the ideal for the United Kingdom.

A larger number of smaller carriers would add cost but reduce capability.

It would be possible to take the budget we spend on surface combatants and use it for carriers.

Assuming none of the carriers had surface combatant escorts,we could have two additional carriers with air wings and replenishment vessels from that budget.

That would give us a strong power projection capability but those carriers would be extremely vulnerable in situations short of war and when they did not have aircraft in the air.

They would also be unable to escort other ships,conduct patrols and do all the other sea control jobs as they could be in very few places at once.

For example,a carrier is not a good tool for stopping and searching ships which might be suspected of minelaying,smuggling,piracy or spying.

Sea control is critical in power projection.

During the American revolution,the Royal Navy lost sea control in the Atlantic,directly resulting in the loss of the war.

The Axis forces could not control the Mediterranean in 1942,their lack of sea control led directly to the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa.

Japan's armies were defeated long before the atom bombs were dropped in 1945 because she could not protect her supply lines from submarines.

Allied forces could not have projected power into Europe in 1944 without maintaining sea control in the Atlantic.

The English fleet's sea control defeated the Spanish Armada's attempt at power projection.

The failure to maintain sea control of the English channel led directly to the invasion of England by the Romans and Normans.

While the Royal Navy is often used to deliver the British Army to foreign shores,the Normandy landings for example.

The Army is also often used to help the Royal Navy gain sea control,the Crimean War for example.

Without power projection forces it is not possible to maintain sea control and with out sea control it is not possible to do power projection.

The key is to have a balanced fleet.


An all carrier fleet would not be viable but reducing the ratio of surface combatants to carriers would.

During the Falklands War we had about 21 surface combatants in service for every aircraft carrier (including Illustrious).

The fleet I outlined previously would have a ratio of 8 surface combatants for every carrier.

I consider that a more appropriate balance.

The fleet I outlined above would be capable of delivering an army heavy division across a beach in a single lift following an air assault by a commando brigade supported by two carrier wings.

Additional divisions would follow on later.

Only the Americans come close to a capability like that.

There is at least £2,000 - £3,000 Million a year of slack in the current defence budget which could expand the army to a five division force,enough to sustain a division or surge a corps.

Combined with the fleet and air forces I outlined,that would be my "fantasy forces".

Regarding submarines,they are very useful but very expensive and limited in what they can do.

Surface ships have a wider utility,for example,a frigate can protect a convoy from maritime patrol aircraft as well as submarines.

We do need to reduce the number of platform types doing anti submarine work.

The best way to do that is by cutting back on expensive to operate aircraft.

We currently have three anti submarine aircraft types,I would suggest we need only one or two at most.

Though the question of whether that should be only fixed wing or rotary aircraft is not a simple matter."

First Correspondence

Recently,I was asked a number of questions by way of personal messages on a forum.

It would be inappropriate to reproduce those messages here but I will reproduce my somewhat hurried responses under the title "Correspondence".

The questions were about naval warfare and the fleet composition of the Royal Navy.

My first reply was as follows:

"Since 1990,I have been of the opinion that the British fleet should consist of the following:

4 large mutirole air attack/air assault carriers (replacements for the current ships Argus,Albion,Bulwark,Invincible,Illustrious,Ark Royal and Ocean)

6 large landing ships both to transport an army division and the heavier assets of the Royal Marines (replacements for the 6 Point and 4 Bay class ships).

6 large replenishment vessels (replacements for (both) Fort,Wave,Rover and Leaf classes,10 ships in total).

1 (ideally 2) large theatre support ships to provide a wide range of support and service support facilities to deployed air,land and sea assets (replacement for Diligence).

32 single class,general purpose,big hulled frigates (replacement for Type 22,Type 23 and eventually Type 45).

16 minehunting sloops/brigs.

4 survey sloops/brigs.

4 patrol sloops/brigs.

12 hunting submarines.

4 bombing submarines.

1 ice patrol brig (Endurance replacement)

All of the above was very affordable before thousands of millions were wasted over the last decade,much of it still is.

Certainly a slightly scaled down version of the above should still be affordable.

I should add some notes:

All of the above surface ships were intended to be based on just three combinations of hullform and machinery although they would differ greatly internally.

The idea is to minimise spending on development and maximise production runs to gain the maximum economies of scale.

Merging complementary roles such as air attack and air assault into one ship class also ensures robust availability (as well as flexibility).

Costs were intended to be spread over a 32 year replacement cycle to create a steady workload for designers and builders and a steady financial burden on the navy's budget,probably around £1,500 Million a year for construction.

The Royal Navy's budget is over £7,000 Million a year.

The large ships would probably have been around 100,000 tonnes,the frigates probably 10,000 and the sloops around 5,000.

All were intended to meet the same requirements for range,endurance and speed so they can operate together.

The large size of the surface combatants in particular was intended to minimise the need for oilers to support single ship patrol tasks,allowing a smaller number of larger replenishment vessels to concentrate on task group support,thus reducing costs.

The carrier capability was intended to save about £1,500 Million a year by allowing the air fleet to be reduced to one domestic air defence wing,one fleet ready wing and one fleet standby wing.

The savings were primarily intended to to be used to allow a larger army to be maintained.

Amphibious operations were based on three strong elements (air attack,air assault and beach landing) rather than the five,weaker elements we plan on at present (air attack,air assault,beach assault,beach landing,port landing).

An amphibious operation is only as viable as it's weakest element.

A general theme was to reduce operating costs by using a smaller number of larger hulls where practical but using those savings to maintain hull numbers where they are beneficial,frigates for example.

The landing ships were big,simple ships but unlike current amphibious vessels.

They were also intended to be used for logistical roles post landing phase.

The above fleet was intended to be able to sustain the following major operational capabilities:

1 ready air attack group;1 ready air assault group;1 standby air attack/air assault group in training/reserve and 1 air attack/air assault group in refit.

1 standby landing group including 5 landing ships,station ship and escorts with 1 landing ship in refit.

1 replenishment group with escorts.

The rest of the frigates were intended for standing patrol tasks.

In addition there were sufficient vessels for fisheries protection,strategic detterent,survey and mine warfare roles.