Royal Navy targeted for more cuts

Monday, June 22, 2009

The Royal Navy faces the prospect of further deep and painful cuts to its capabilities this year as part of an MoD wide initiative to balance the budget.

According to various defence sources with knowledge of the current planning round, the Royal Navy and RAF are together considering cutting the Joint Harrier Force, while the Navy may scrap some of its Type 42 destroyers earlier and delay the Future Surface Combatant (FSC) by up to 20 years.

Each service will be expected to make drastic sacrifices in order to meet the £2bn cut coming to the defence budget next year. But the Royal Navy is rumoured to be among the biggest losers.

The MoD has refused to comment on planning round discussions and everything is speculation at the moment. Completely axing the Harrier force would be a drastic and dramatic step but it seems unlikely at this point unless the MoD is also planning to cut the new aircraft carriers from the budget. Without the Harrier Force the current carriers would not have any fixed wing aircraft for operations until 2018 when the Joint Strike Fighter comes into service.

Cutting a few of the Type 42 Destroyers is a possibility, but completely axing all of them from the fleet in the next few years is also unlikely. The Type 45 Destroyers are slowly coming into service so a complete cut to the Type 42 fleet would leave the Navy with a major capability gap for up to five years.

As a compromise the Navy may agree to bring forward the out of service dates on one or two of the ships.

Delays to the FSC seem the most likely at the moment. The MoD has repeatedly refused to give details of an FSC timeline and requirements. It is unclear what they actually want in terms of a replacement for the Type 22 and 23 frigates and how many they will need. Ministers have said that decisions will be taken in the next few years and have avoided questions from MPs on the subject.

As a result the Type 22 and 23s will have their lives extended which could prove to be more costly in the long run due to the need for major upgrades and maintenance programmes to keep the ships afloat.