“The Nelson Touch
did not refer to diplomacy or his sensitivity to humanitarian need, however
rightly important they are in this modern age. No, the Nelson Touch referred to
the combination-in-action of innovation, education, instinct, technology and
teamwork in the pursuit of victory”.
Julian Lindley-French, Trafalgar Dinner Speech, HMS Nelson, Portsmouth 2018
Alphen.
Netherlands. 22 October. This past week one of Britain’s new 70,000 ton
aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth,
took delivery of her first four F-35B Lightning 2 strike aircraft. It was quite
a sight and a very big moment! Royal Navy carrier strike is back! https://www.youtube.com/embed/jNYkbqFseYw?feature=oembed
As she was
receiving the first of her aircraft off Florida, the second ship of the class,
the brand-new HMS Prince of Wales,
was undergoing sea trials off the coast of Scotland. The Royal Navy is once
again reinventing itself as Europe’s command hub navy, Britain’s future
maritime-amphibious strike force, and a true burden-sharing friend of the United
States and its overstretched navy.
This week last year
I was in the UK, where I gave the annual Trafalgar Night dinner speech on board
HMS Nelson at Her Majesty’s Naval
Base, Portsmouth. It was a big night and a great honour. There were also two
First Sea Lords in attendance. One told me I was a controversial figure,
apparently (and hopefully) because I dare speak hard truth to often dim power.
The other did not like the film I had made entitled The Second Battle of North Cape, during which a Russian hypersonic
anti-ship missile sinks HMS Queen Elizabeth,
even though he knows I am a big fan of the carrier programme.
In a sense, both
miss the point of my message. Given the fast changing character of war, and if Britain
really does aspires to remain a ‘Tier One’ military actor, and the two carriers
clearly indicate it does, then it will also need to face the hard realities of
Tier One warfare in the twenty-first century.
If the two carriers are not properly protected against twenty-first
century technology then they could be little more than a “target of
convenience”, as one Russian admiral put it. Anything less is dangerous
strategic pretence.
So, why am I fan
of the carriers? My speech in Portsmouth was entitled Nelson and the Pursuit of Victory.
My theme was Nelson’s ruthless pursuit of adaptation and innovation to
win. The Royal Navy has always been at the forefront of adaptation. It adapted
in the wake of Nelson’s wooden-walled battleship fleet to become the imperial
policeman of the High Victorian age. The Naval Service again adapted in the
face of Wilhelmine Germany’s challenge to create the Dreadnoughts and
super-Dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet, which in May 1916 inflicted a strategic
defeat on Admiral Scheer’s High Seas Fleet.
As a broke Britain
began to decline in the wake of World War One and the drastic cull of the
Geddes Axe, the Royal Navy was forced into a trap in which it has been ever
since. The Naval Service simply could not be both a battle-fleet in being and
an imperial policing force at one and the same time. With the rise of Hitler in
Germany, Mussolini in Italy and the Mediterranean, and Tojo in Japan, all with
naval ambitions, it simply became impossible for the Naval Service to defend
the home base, imperial lines of communication, and the eastern British
Empire. The disaster that was waiting to
happen took place off Malaya in December 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor, when
a previous HMS Prince of Wales was
sunk, together with the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, by the air power of the Imperial
Japanese Navy (I wrote an Oxford thesis on all of this!).
The essential
problem was that from the early 1930s Britain was trying to be a pocket
superpower on a shoestring budget with London committing the Navy to too many
tasks, over too much space, and with too few hulls. Not unlike today. Some suggest that
the ‘RN’ today has too few hulls to be both a ‘Corbett Navy’ (imperial
policing) and a ‘Mahan Navy’ (a battle fleet). Thankfully, it does not have to.
In the wake of World War Two the RN handed the global policing role to the United
States Navy, which is today facing similar pressures to that faced by the Royal
Navy in the 1930s. The task of the Royal Navy became then, as it is now, to
help keep the US Navy strong where it needs to be.
Cue carriers! The
job of the reinvented carrier-strike Royal Navy is essentially to have the
capability, the offensive strike power and defensive strength to command a
coalition of European/Allied navies in a future high-end emergency in the Atlantic in
which the Americans are busy elsewhere.
In other words, the ability to act as a credible fast, first, high-end responder force in and around Europe. Does that mean on occasions the RN might
not be able to be everywhere all of the time? Yes. This is not the Navy of
Admiral Parker.
However, with a
powerful future fleet of two QE-class
carriers, Type 45 destroyers, Astute-class
nuclear-attack submarines, and Type 26 and Type 31 frigates, the Royal Navy is
once again reinventing itself as the core of European maritime-amphibious
coalitions. The delicious irony, given all the Trafalgar stuff, is that to make
this logical strategy work the Royal Navy will need to work closely with the
French Navy, which it does. One of the
finest dinners I ever enjoyed was on the gun deck of Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, sitting opposite the admiral in
command of France’s finest.
To conclude, peer through the political nonsense of
Brexit, which will at some point ease. Britain’s
enduring position as a major European regional-strategic power is embodied in
the two new carriers, and will continue to be so, for many years to come. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are two armed
icebergs at the tip of a largely unseen British security and defence effort
that transcends politics and Brexit. For the sake of Europe’s defence, and the
health of the transatlantic relationship, it would be a profound loss if Britain
simply became another of those ‘talk a lot, do very little’ European countries
that seem to think their defence is someone else’s job. However, precisely because Royal Navy carrier-strike is back London must finally invest in the strategy their existence
demands.
As for sniffy
Royal Navy admirals, ‘tant pis’, as Admiral Villeneuve might have said. British
admirals should know their own history. Informed members of the awkward squad like
me are vital if HMS Queen Elizabeth
and/or HMS Prince of Wales are not one
day to suffer the same fate as another one-time ‘invincible pride of the Royal
Navy’ – ‘The Mighty Hood! Just read my
forthcoming Oxford book – Future War and
the Defence of Europe.
The Royal Navy’s carrier
strike is back! Now, let’s finish the job and give them the tools to do what
they are really designed for – to deter a high-end war by being demonstrably
able to fight one!
Julian
Lindley-French
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