donald_of_tokyo wrote:Building ships which cannot be manned, upgrading ships which cannot be manned and will decommission within a few years.
Agree completely with the thrust of your comments. I’d say that the political obsession with maintaining Frigate numbers through the T31e programme (and dangling the carrot of increasing numbers) is leading to bad decision making. People are hoping for a windfall for the defence budget during the next budget - this may happen but this should be spent on more T26s and Multirole Sloops any day ahead of a half arsed Frigate.
The whole RN structure is being based around two CSGs and (more limited) forward based presence. The FLSS falls into the latter and any ARG into the former - there is no separate ARG nor should there be IMO. 6 T45s + T26s, are (just) sufficient to support 2 CSGs, TAPS/FRE and one standing commitment (Kipion).
The T31e design is falsely pitched as a Colonial Patrol Ship where the local “natives” feel reassured to see the white ensign and where there is no danger of being coming up against a foe of equal (or higher) capability. This is a 19th century Fantasy, that wasn’t even true then. The only roles that this type of ship could take up are FIGS, WIGS and GiGS where the current (River B2) Sloops with some modification can do already.
The real needs beyond the current proposed commitments/ structure above (which requires the 14 T45 and T26 numbers) are:
- (ASW) Sea Control of North Atlantic
- Challenging Russian and Chinese ambitions to restrict freedom of navigation in the Black and South China seas
- Supporting multinational groups fighting piracy in important sea choke points
- Escorting the two FLSSs either in low level (West of Suez) or medium level (East of Suez) operations
- Having a third available CSG to allow the RN to have more of an active 1st tier global role
None of these require the T31e, and they shouldn’t be done without more cash where the RN/UK could afford the right assets (more T26s, SSNs, MPAs, modifies Sloop-of-Wars aka OPVs etc). Even for the FLSS escorts the answer should be a T26 or modified River.
To cut a long story short, unless the T31e is a guise to keep T23 numbers whilst the government backtracks and increases Defence spending and buys real (T26) frigates, then let’s stop wasting money and cut the T23s to the real expected force size and maximise everything we’ve got.
My money remains on the hope of another T26 (to base in Singapore and operate with the RSnN, RAN and RNZN) and a new batch of 3 extended River Sloop-of-Wars (replacing the B1s) and upgrades to the B2s with limited ASW capabilities to cover FIGS, WIGS, GiGS and better support FRE/TAPS freeing up more of the T26 time to operate in the North Atlantic and East Med.