After an expensive reorientation, the British Navy has to again contemplate a radical restructuring to face the renewed threat of major power war in Europe. This day's strategic environment is radically different than the one when the fleet was planned and built.
Sadly not. Both ships are currently keeping watch in that notorious trouble spot known as... Portsmouth Harbour. A few days ago, Tobias Ellwood, the Tory MP and former defence minister, asked the Defence Secretary whether he plans to task an aircraft carrier to the Middle East. The answer was no time soon, though according to the Ministry of Defence, our Carrier Strike Group (the collective term for the carriers and their support vessels) is ready to sally forth, should the call come.
To describe that as misleading is generous. For while it is true that the Navy could just about cobble together something resembling a Carrier Strike Group, despatching it anywhere remotely risky would be criminally foolhardy – and leave Britain dangerously exposed. The painful truth is that since the ships were first commissioned, the march of technology has threatened to render them both obsolete.
We do not have enough smaller warships or submarines or indeed weaponry to optimally protect them, in the way the US carrier is kept safe, unless we are willing to abandon the protection of our own coast and our nuclear deterrent.
I've had worries about the new composition of the Royal Navy:
If Britain is focusing their navy on supporting a single carrier strike group, and having problems even with that limited goal, is the Royal Navy vulnerable to being taken down with one good hit on the carrier at sea?
This is a problem now:
This path was perhaps defensible when the Royal Navy was for power projection in the absence of serious naval opposition. In the era of great power competition that puts control of the seas in doubt, it is kind of nuts.
Or a failure to distinguish between those two types of missions.
Sadly given events, Britain made what seemed like a reasonable bet on what the future would look like:
No longer tied to the defense of Europe because of the shattering of the Soviet Union, Britain is looking to a wider world of defense missions to support their diplomacy and trade. Will the sun ever set on British influence?
That global capability is no longer the prime military objective since Putin decided to wage war in Europe.
I worry America can't protect its carriers. The British have it even tougher. Where do their expensive carriers fit in with the renewed era of Russian threats to Europe?
Would the new but expensive carriers better serve British security interests in Indian service in order to free British resources for Europe and protecting freedom of navigation from threats like the Houthi?
UPDATE: You go to war with the navy you have, not the navy you might want or wish to have at a later time.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
