It was excellent to see the Royal Navy’s latest warship, HMS
FORTH quickly settle into the busy operational life of an Offshore Patrol
Vessel this week. Having barely completed sea trials, she found herself in the
Channel this week escorting a Russian warship (the Vasily Byskov) on transit.
The challenge with this sort of escort mission is that it
seems to attract views from a lot of social media commentators that somehow
using an OPV in this way means the UK has ‘failed’ by not sending a ‘proper
warship’ to do the job.
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| HMS FORTH at sea- Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright |
The role of escorting ships from other nations through our
waters is a task that has been carried out by many different Royal Navy
warships. Some are large, for example the Fleet Ready Escort may be called out,
while others are smaller – for example the use of the MCMV force. The one thing
they have in common is that each vessel that puts to sea is a fully operational
warship, commissioned and used to carry out the full range of operational tasks
that the Royal Navy delivers on behalf of the British Government.
Frankly escorting a Russian ship is a role that doesn’t need
a highly advanced £1bn destroyer to do on a regular basis. Ensuring that the
ship proceeds safely and in accordance with the Rules of the Road and international
convention is key, and ensuring that they do not experience any problems while
in our waters (which given the propensity of Russian task groups to deploy with
a rescue tug is entirely possible).
This role doesn’t need an advanced warship as a matter of course
– it is highly unlikely that the Russians would be willing to start a war with
the UK by the slightly unconventional method of opening fire on an escorting
vessel in the middle of the Channel. That said, this is the nation whose
leadership that thought it sensible to employ WMD in Salisbury, so you can
never be entirely certain what their cathedral spotters may think up next…
But more seriously, the balance to be struck here is whether
the best use for the RN escort force is to send ships to sea on shepherding duties
like this, or if it is better to hold them at readiness for a credible task or
threat. If the ship is at sea already then that’s one thing, but does it really
make sense to send a destroyer to sea to do a job that an OPV, explicitly
designed for this sort of slow surveillance and escort role, could do equally
as well?
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| HMS LIVERPOOL |
This is a great example of the versatility of the RIVER
class vessels, and their ability to conduct this sort of low intensity work
which needs to be done. Deploying a capable platform the size of an early Cold War
era frigate out to sea, with appropriate communications, support and flight
deck is a great opportunity, and a classic role for a UK warship to undertake.
The RIVER class are likely to find themselves extremely busy
in the years to come, with FORTH off to the Falklands to replace HMS CLYDE, while
others of the class will almost certainly be globally deployed to represent the
RN in different areas. They are very capable platforms, cheap and able to
represent RN interests without committing an expensive escort ship to the task.
This is perhaps what matters here – while some may feel that
an OPV is not a ‘proper warship’ the reality of the history of the Royal Navy
is that for centuries much of its work has been undertaken by little vessels
conducting routine jobs. Escorting convoys, conducting routine surveillance
patrols, ensuring the Russians don’t break down (again) in our waters – all of
this is bread and butter for the RN.
While we may yearn for some kind of gigantic ‘HMS KICKYOURFACEIN’
to steam effortlessly into sight to do every mission going, the real story of
the RN is of small ships in routine situations.
This may not sound particularly
warlike, but frankly over its very long history, the RN has spent most of its
time at peace, conducting fishery enforcement and sovereignty protection with
ships like HMS FORTH and her predecessors, and not forming line ahead to engage
the enemy more closely. This is the work that real Royal Navy warships do, and
have done, day in, day out, for centuries.
There is also a possible snobbishness in some facebook
observers who feel that somehow the OPV isn’t a real warship because the title
suggests a small vessel. This is perhaps misleading. The Batch 2 RIVER class
are, dimensions wise, a similar length and breadth to, and faster than many
pre-WW1 Royal Navy cruisers.
So while we may look back with rose tinted spectacles to a time
when the Royal Navy was extremely large, we should be wary of assuming that
every ship in service was a giant cruiser. Many of the ships that did this work,
such as the RN cruisers escorting of the Russian fleet after the Dogger Bank
incident were of a similar size to HMS FORTH, and relatively lightly armed. Would
people 115 years ago have been concerned that the then HMS BRILLIANT was ‘not a
proper warship’ if she escorted the Russian Navy?
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| HMS BRILLIANT |
Maybe the challenge here is one of public perception – we view
the RN primarily through the prism of its glorious history of Battleships in heavy
seas, or the cruiser squadrons at Jutland. We regard real warships as those who
fire broadsides that could blow a hole in your great aunts Christmas pudding, or
aircraft carriers steaming into the wind while launching jets
.
We don’t regard the mighty vessels of the MCMV force or Fishery
Protection Squadron in the same way, yet these ships are indispensable to the
RN. Without the HUNT class in the Gulf War, the US Navy could not have put its
IOWA class battleships on the gun line to bombard Iraqi positions. Without the
OPV force, we would not be able to conduct fishery inspections, conduct
maritime counter terrorism operations or carry out the small scale but vital tasks
that are expected of the RN.
Many of these jobs are not glamorous, they rarely get kinetic
and they often involve a lot of time in heavy seas and foul weather trying to
keep the nation safe in a way that rarely gets media interest or attention. But
without them and their crews efforts, the nations security would be imperilled.
We should always regard every ship that bears the title ‘HMS’ from the MAGPIE
to the QUEEN ELIZABETH as a real warship, because that is what they are.
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