The Royal Navy Is No More

The Astute class submarines being built at BAE Systems shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria - each costing more than £1billion (Photo from The Daily Mail)

Royal Navy: Sunk! (Corrected) -- War Is Boring

It takes a profound institutional meltdown to make the Pentagon look like a tight-run ship in comparison. Leave it to the British Ministry of Defense to allow just such a catastrophe in the U.K.’s senior service. In the roughly 15 years since the end of the Cold War, the Royal Navy — once one of the leading navies — has lost all of its fighter jets, one of its three small carriers and half its submarines, destroyers and frigates.

The service hit rock bottom with the news this month that there are just five active Type 42 destroyers to perform air-defense for the entire fleet. “Three Type 42 destroyers – Exeter, Nottingham and Southampton – have been ‘parked up’ in Portsmouth at ‘reduced readiness’ up to two years before they were due to be decommissioned,” The Telegraph reports.

Meanwhile new procurement has stalled: current shipbuilding supports a long-term fleet of just six destroyers and six attack submarines (pictured) to escort two large aircraft carriers and a single amphibious assault ship (correction: plus two smaller amphibs) and perform all the other missions that reasonably should be expected of a supposed world power. There is no viable plan for replacing the current, backbone force of 17 frigates.

Read more ....

My Comment: The Royal Navy .... a proud institution that is no more. Thank you Tony Blair. Thank you Labor Party and their Conservative allies.