SW1 wrote: ↑11 Jun 2023, 15:14
I have read some nonsense about the U.K. not having a blue water navy because these two ships are to be sold. We have/will have 4 tankers and 3 stores ships the French have 3 fuel/stores ships and the Japanese 5 and I bet they are considered a blue water navy’s.
Realism and priorities matter people just don’t want to when coming up with wish lists. If your not prepared to be realistic within your budget and do too much you will become smaller by overreaching
We currently have just 5 replenishment ships: the 4*Tide Class Tankers and 1* Fort Victoria. It will be a while before the 2nd or 3rd of the FSS are completed and ready for service - probably not until 2030 - 2032.
We need the 4*Tides for supporting the two carriers (only one of which at any time will be operating at any time as a CSG) and also LRG(N). So I believe it would be useful to have even one replenishment ship EoS in support of LRG(S) and Operation Kipion etc.
Both Fort Rosalie class were decommissioned in 2021 and sold to Egypt. Wave Ruler was placed in "reduced readiness" in June 2020. So realistically the only ship that was remotely likely to be reactivated is Wave Knight, which was placed in "extended readiness" as recently as Feb 2022.
With Wave Knight able to provid fuel, food, fresh water & ammunition, able to carry a Merlin helicopter, and having full mdical team and sickbay, she could have been extremely useful, asset to RN even if kept on until the last FSS is commissioned. I am assuming the costs for reactivating Wave Knight would be far lower than her sister ship, who has been out of active service far longer.
So then it comes down to the lack of crew in both RN and RFA, where we have had to decommision both Echo and Enterprise to bring Proteus and Stirling Castle into (much needed) active service. It is a damning indictment we can't find 80 RFA crew to man Wave Kinght and 20 odd RN crew to man the helicopter.....