Royal Navy Strike's Back!

“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