The fading navy
DEFENCE DESMOND WETTERN
In surveying the European scene in the after- math of the Russian invasion of Czecho- slovakia foreign affairs commentators have looked around for further likely victims of Soviet imperialism. Rumania, Finland, even Yugoslavia, all have been viewed as possible 'threats' in the Kremlin's eyes. But if and when another 'invitation' is received by Moscow to aid 'socialist forces' against 'counter-revolutionaries and capitalists' will it necessarily come from nations within, or bor- dering upon, the communist bloc? Could not Moscow receive its 'invitation' from, say, a key Persian Gulf oil state, or even perhaps from a nation occupying a position of great strategic or political importance in Africa or, just pos- sibly, Latin America? In a few short years, really less than half a decade, the Soviet Union has acquired not only the means but also, it would seem, the 'know-how' to maintain and use seapower to further its interests around the world. We have already seen this new-found seapower in action in the Mediterranean last year; more recently we have seen it following up the an- nouncement of Britain's impending withdrawal from the Persian Gulf. And npw Soviet naval forces are deployed, possibly permanently, in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal.
We know they have the necessary equip- ment: with large missile ships capable of de- stroying any western surface warship unsup- ported by aircraft; with missile boats able to sink much larger ships at a range of fifteen to twenty miles, as the loss of the Israeli destroyer Tilath' showed; and with a huge fleet of nuclear and diesel-electric submarines which they are still modernising and augment- ing. They now have, in fact, both the ability and the desire to operate naval forces across the globe in support of their foreign policy and overseas interests: in other words, a pretty classic example of seapower.
It is against such a background that today the Royal Navy is being cut to a point which leaves it weaker than at any time in this century. The Commander-in-Chief, Western Fleet, whose 'parish' covers the entire Atlantic between the two Poles, the Mediterranean and part of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, has be- tween twenty-five and thirty ships of frigate size and larger available to him at any given moment. The Commander, Far East Fleet, has about fifteen ships of similar types for an area covering most of the Indian Ocean and much of the Pacific. The ship shortage in the Western Fleet has been described by a senior officer as 'desperate.'
Naval recruiting has slumped as a result of lack of public confidence in the Services' future as a worthwhile career. Ministry of Defence experts say that unless recruiting figures improve markedly in the next few months it will be impossible to maintain even the present size of fleet in service by 1972.
Nor is the position regarding the warship building programme any more encouraging despite Mr Wilson's assertion in the 1964 elec- tion campaign CI believe we shall need an expanded ship-building programme'), because the Navy had been run down to a 'dangerously low' extent. When he spoke there were thirty ships on order or under construction for the Navy—today there are sixteen.
Even in the field of weapons the Navy is not properly equipped and will be even less so when the carriers go officially in 1972, although this time-limit may be extended. Lord Chalfont has promised that seven of the eight nuclear fleet submarines now in service, building or planned, would be available to replace the car- riers by 1972, but of the tactical missile with which they are to be equipped he made no men- tion—perhaps not surprisingly since it will not be in service until the mid-'seventies. Until then they must rely on torpedoes with a few miles' range to replace aircraft capable of flying about 1,500 miles without refuelling.
Yet despite all the evidence of deficiencies in the Navy, do these really matter in the con- text of today's world power-politics? There are two ways of answering this: either one can say that our armed forces are no longer of any significance so why maintain any at ali- as some left-wing members of the Labour party hint; or one can examine just how many times since 1945 the Navy has been called upon to maintain our interests, support our friends, aid UN forces and 'keep the peace.' Is there any reason to suppose such incidents will diminish in the next decade? Rather, it would seem,' the calls upon the Navy will in- crease, particularly if our forces are withdrawn from Singapore and the Gulf.
We can, of course, talk of its being time that other western nations shared defence burdens in the common interest overseas. But apart from the United States not one nation today possesses the necessary capability nor could this be built up without disrupting the entire pattern upon which our NATO allies have established their forces in recent years.
If recent events in central Europe force the Government to look again at its defence policy, though this seems doubtful, one thing is essential. Quite simply this is to start realising that we remain an island utterly dependent upon foreign markets and sources of raw materials and food for our very existence, and, obviously, upon shipping. H-bombs or Polaris missiles can in no way provide a substitute for the kind of forces we have had to deploy around the world in the past twenty-five years. These forces more often than not have been provided by the Navy—whether amphibious ships at Kuwait, frigates in the West Indies or minesweepers on the international fishing grounds, and, above all, carriers. In any kind of operation today at sea or launched from the sea, the control of the air over the fleet is a sine qua non.
Fortunately with planes like a modified form of the vrot. Harrier we have a means to hand to provide that air support, at a price far below that of the £60 million carrier killed by the 1966 Defence Review. The Italian Navy, with responsibilities limited to an area in easy reach of shore-based aircraft, is keenly interested in buying the Harrier. We, with responsibilities around the world, the East of Suez withdrawal notwithstanding, plan to uphold our commit- ments without any aircraft at all outside the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
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