Type 23 frigate HMS ‘Montrose’ firing a Harpoon missile. Royal Navy photo
Robert Beckhusen, War Is Boring: The Royal Navy Faces a Future Without Anti-Ship Missiles
Britain could see years without one if it retires the Harpoon in the 2020s
Right now, the Royal Navy’s main surface-to-surface anti-ship weapon is the over-the-horizon Harpoon missile, which is also the primary equivalent weapon in service with the U.S. Navy since 1977. Back then, the missile soon became a workhorse that provided considerable range compared to other anti-ship weapons at the time.
With the advent of new Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles proliferating around the world, however, that is no longer the case. And unlike the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy will be without Harpoons or a replacement for them within a few years, turning its ships into sitting ducks.
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WNU Editor: There are some stories that you just cannot make-up .... this is one of them. And while I am sure the Royal Navy will be finding a replacement soon, it is going to be a "rush job" .... and not cheap.
It's not that weird for the Royal Navy. Major surface combatants routinely sail without basic equipment. It's the Brown government that's really to blame. They made a lot of mistakes... Like having a part time Defense Secretary (minister of defense) for one thing. The man was utterly ignorant of military matters, to the degree that he'd appear on the TV news claiming the military had X capacity or Y weapons system, when the Ministry of Defence had long ago sold or scrapped X or Y to save money. (For example, the cretin thought that the UK still had Sea Harriers literally years after they'd been sold off.)
ReplyDeleteUnder Brown, the RN became all about buying big platforms without having the budgets to run them. Essentially, the two new aircraft carriers were a bribe from Brown weeks before a crucial general election that his party lost (in 2010). They were a bribe to unions at the shipyards that would build the CVs. (85% of the shipyards were in areas with a Labour MP; also, the union that's present in most of the shipyards funds a third of all Labour MPs). Anyhow, there wasn't any money to pay for the carriers - let alone their F-35B air wings. The RN had their hands tied by Brown.
BTW, Brown was severely mentally ill when he approved the CV contract. Literally: UK newspapers repeatedly reported that he was on very heavy duty M.A.O. psychiatric medication, was being treated for severe depression, and had frequent violent outbursts.
With no other options, the RN sold off every surface combatant they could politically get away with selling, including relatively new frigates which were the backbone of the Royal Navy. They stopped buying missiles and even ammo for the main guns. They stopped buying spares, maintenance was slashed, etc. When a ship came in for maintenance, kit would be taken off it and transferred to a ship that was about to begin a tour of duty.
So, the RN has had almost-useless surface warfare platforms ever since that decision. The destroyers routinely break down, and the frigates and destroyers alike are routinely without equipment that the USN (by way of contrast) would consider vital. (E.g., air defense missiles, ASuW missiles, ASW torpedos, Phalanx CIWS, etc.)
Take the RN's Daring class Tye-45 destroyers, which are 8500 tons – almost the displacement of an Arleigh Burke. Despite being designed primarily for anti-air warfare, the first ship of the class went through three different captains before it received its surface to air missiles or Phalanx. It was on the third or fourth captain before it received the first Harpoon missiles – recycled from a perfectly good Type-22 that had been sold off early due to budget cuts. Two of the six Daring class don't have Harpoons at all. The RN had originally planned for 12 Type-45s, but the CV cost overruns (and cost per se) torpedoed that idea.