Alternative Royal Navy post 1997

Let's turn to a macro strategic Vision here and this is where UK decisions since 1990 start to look very shaky.

The coming global population decline was already in train. The numbers started showing up in the 60's even as various authors were banging the drum about overpopulation. The Bzby Boom was over and they were having less children than their parents.

Industrialisation, City living, women driven into the workforc. It was already known to cause a decrease in reproduction. Cultural shifts only exacerbated it.

While the likes of Peter Zeihan are a bit OTT. The fundamentals are not wrong.

And the US is now withdrawing from global affairs. If anything the last 20 has rather soured the idea of interventions and the US has potential energy security, resource security and a less serious issue with population decline than a large list of other countries.

In this world the UK will have to recover more of it's independent capability and capacity to act. Our survival will depend on it.

The signs are there that some inside Whitehall realise this and are moving in the right direction. Hence Type 31 and talk of Type 32, alongside a host of increased developments civil and military.

The question is.....is it too little too late?
What the Ukraine War has triggered is the acceleration of a change come collapse in the current global order.
And events in the Red Sea a portent of things to come.

From securing the GIUK Gap to exertion of force along the West African Coast and even the return of Argentinian Beef. The UK needs the power of it's Navy again.

We should have kept the Frigate/Destroyer mix above 30, and submarines above 14.

Which ideally means more ships and submarines run off during the 90's to 2000's.

That's not just the fault of a Peace Dividend or post ERM pinch in finances. This has been a growing problem increasingly visible all through the last 30 years. If not the last 50, when I was born in the very maximal dip in UK births and only a year after the final crossover of wages to house inflation.

I was arguing the population/culture issue Zeihan and Steyn were raising in 2006. Not that I imagined what would happen in the last few years, which will make everything much harder.

Things would be a lot easier though had certain decisions been different and the Blair Government had the opportunity, the Vision and the political capital to act.
Fundamentally they didn't.
The reasons for that are now increasingly impossible to ignore and not that the alternative amongst the Conservatives was any better.
The triumph of the Managerial Elite and their existence in High Abstraction.
 
CNH said:
The carriers can only cope with VTOL aircraft. They are incredibly expensive. As a consequence, the RN will probably be reduced to subs, one carrier [the other mothballed] and half a dozen type 45s.
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You may be right, I'm afraid. The decision to downgrade the carriers from STOBAR / CATOBAR to V(S)TOL left the RN with a still enormously expensive weapons system but with significantly reduced capability. If you're going to invest in expensive carriers, you might as well go big or go home.

Or design much smaller carriers from the get-go, "Harrier carriers" but for F-35s or something akin to the USN's amphibious assault ships that once carried Harriers and now F-35s.
 
Capability is inherent to the capacity for the RAF to reinforce a meagre number of embarked aircraft.
That is not happening with CATOBAR.
As it is the magazine depth.
 
zen said:
Capability is inherent to the capacity for the RAF to reinforce a meagre number of embarked aircraft.
That is not happening with CATOBAR.
As it is the magazine depth.
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Relying on the RAF to create a proper-sized VTOL air wing means of course that now you have fewer RAF squadrons at home or deployed forward.

If the UK had stuck with a STOBAR or CATOBAR carrier, yes it would be somewhat more expensive (but things are already expensive), but you'd get the more capable F-35C and the capability, likely, for a fixed wing AEW&C aircraft. You could also, of course, add on as many VTOL F-35Bs as could fit after housing at least a squadron of F-35Cs.

Oh well.

Of course, its not like the QE Carriers are pointless. The F-35B is still a very competent weapons system. More sophisticated than anything on the Admiral Kuznetsov!
 
Training for CATOBAR is much more expensive than STOVL, hence why the latter was selected in the first place.
 
Helicopter AEW is good enough, and operating a mostly STOVL airwing from a CATOBAR carrier, with CATOBAR supporting assets, is the worst of both worlds since you have to pay for two different forms of carrier training, especially the more expensive CATOBAR training, have to purchase two specialist types of aircraft with very limited production runs, get the worse range and payload of STOVL limiting the effectiveness of the res of your airwing, and not to mention the greater number of highly trained flight-deck personnel required for CATOBAR operations.

STOVL CVF is good enough given the UK's personnel and financial restraints, it's fairly competent strike carrier who size enables it to perform a reasonably high number of sorties per day, with the magazine depth to sustain them.

Probably my only question regarding CVF, is whether CVF Design Alpha, sans Sampson and Aster (I would want to keep them, but the money isn't there), would be cheaper to run in the long term despite it's higher upfront costs, given the greater automation, especially the full automated weapons handling system, and semi-automated provisions pallet handling system reducing personnel requirements.
 
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The pre 1991 Royal Navy was optimiaed for ASW in the N Atlantic.
After 1991 the Tories presided over the peace dividend.
The 1997 Strategic Defence Review was intended to cope with situations like Kosovo and Sierra Leone.
Then 9/11 happened and the RN role is pretty much limited to launching Tomahawks from SSNs.
Given the shift to land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan it is remarkable the RN kept as many ships as it did.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
Probably my only question regarding CVF, is whether CVF Design Alpha, sans Sampson and Aster (I would want to keep them, but the money isn't there), would be cheaper to run in the long term despite it's higher upfront costs, given the greater automation, especially the full automated weapons handling system, and semi-automated provisions pallet handling system.
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I agree, Aster would be overkill for CVF. It's a pity CAMM didn't exist then as it would have been ideal.
 
For most of its long history the Royal Navy has measured itself against an "enemy fleet in being".
After 1991 this has been more difficult.
Russia collapsed its navy and after we handed over Hong Kong in 1997 China was pretty much someone else's problems.
In the period between 1918 and 1939 the RN regarded the US and French navies as rivals if not potential enemies. As Japan, Italy and Germany built up their navies the threats were clear if not easy to cope with.
Modern navies are much smaller than they were up until 1991. Most are poorly trained with only a few major units. The West is fortunate in having the best navies on its side. Only India from the non aligned countries has a serious blue water navy. Conflict with India is unlikely.
As Ukraine has shown modern warships can be sunk easily with a variety of non naval weapons (the USS Cole was damaged in a similar fashion). As I write this Yemeni Houtou are able to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea despite the best efforts of the US and UK forces.
Even the best navies can be humiliated by motivated opponents as the RN found when it underestimated the Iranians and had its people captured in broad daylight.
Some lessons from the last sixty years are still valid:
SSBNs are the most effective nuclear deterrent for the UK especially if they share a missile with the USN.
SSNs are the most effective way of killing enemy submarines and shipping as well as project conventional missiles at low risk.
Escort ships with high tech weapons will spend most of their working lives in low tech peacetime activities like drug enforcement disaster relief and other actions in support of civil authorities.
The aircraft carrier while vulnerable to SSNs and long range air power in a general war is a flexible way of deploying air power and supporting amphibious operations but it costs.
 
Hood said:
I agree, Aster would be overkill for CVF. It's a pity CAMM didn't exist then as it would have been ideal.
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I don't view it as overkill in a very distributed formation, CAMM seems to be a more effective means of replacing CIWS, like on the Canadian Surface Combatant.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
Helicopter AEW is good enough, and operating a mostly STOVL airwing from a CATOBAR carrier, with CATOBAR supporting assets, is the worst of both worlds since you have to pay for two different forms of carrier training, especially the more expensive CATOBAR training, have to purchase two specialist types of aircraft with very limited production runs, get the worse range and payload of STOVL limiting the effectiveness of the res of your airwing, and not to mention the greater number of highly trained flight-deck personnel required for CATOBAR operations.

STOVL CVF is good enough given the UK's personnel and financial restraints, it's fairly competent strike carrier who size enables it to perform a reasonably high number of sorties per day, with the magazine depth to sustain them.

Probably my only question regarding CVF, is whether CVF Design Alpha, sans Sampson and Aster (I would want to keep them, but the money isn't there), would be cheaper to run in the long term despite it's higher upfront costs, given the greater automation, especially the full automated weapons handling system, and semi-automated provisions pallet handling system reducing personnel requirements.
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I doubt Merlin AEW is flying at 25,000ft or higher like Hawkeye can, which even assuming the same radar gives a much further range to the horizon for the radar.
 

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