Strategy

The Navy's not here

Patrick Cosgrave

Jane's Fighting Ships has long — and justly — been acclaimed as indispensable, and a masterpiece. There is another, and more important, characteristic of this comprehensive compendium of the world's battle fleets — the latest edition of which has just appeared* — too little and too rarely adverted to: it is terrifying.

It is also saddening. To look through successive editions of Janes's is to see the shrinking of British naval power taking place before one's eyes. Britain has now only two aircraft carriers; one is de-stored, that is, out of action, and both are to be phased out; another ex-aircraft carrier has become our single heavy repair ship. It is, of course, said in those naval circles with particular inclinations that the day of the aircraft carrier is done: it is too costly, and too cumbersome. Thus we should praise the architects of the through-deck cruiser, Britain's latest contribution to naval technology: it is to replace our carriers and will combine their efficacy with the costeffectiveness of a cruiser. All very well but, even if it were true, it takes no account of the fact that the Navy will have to get by for a time without either carriers or cruisers; nor of the worry encouraged by what the editor of Jane's calls the cruiser's "extended period of gestation." Moreover, he adds, "it is feared that this so-called through-deck cruiser will cost more than the much larger orthodox fixedwing aircraft carrier which was cancelled by the late Government." He concludes:

The stark truth is that the strength of the Royal Navy has fallen below the safety level required to protect the home islands, to guard the ocean trade routes for the worlddeployed British mercantile marine (still the largest in the wt,r1d), to protect the vast commercial and financial interests overseas, and to meet NATO, ANZUK and other treaty commitments.

To such a pass, inevitable or not, have we come in terms of pure naval clout.

One of the difficulties attending any analysis of Britain's naval position is the extent to which sentiment about the past is inextricably mixed up with sense' about the present. The sheer shocked nostalgia we feel in contemplating our rapid decline since the end of the First World War — in 1939 the German Navy, though numerically much weaker, was more advanced — makes us either demand the impossible, or resign ourselves to waxing impotence. The latter attitude predominates, as was made manifest in the shrill outcry from, among others — and to their eternal shame — academic and journalistic defence experts, which greeted the Conservative Party's bald commitment to the defence of the trade routes (which involved the sale of arms to South Africa). Mr Heath and his colleagues were accused of the most ludicrous neo-imperialistic pretensions, not because they pretended for a moment that Britain alone could defend the Indian Ocean and the Cape routes against Russia, but because they stated a plain truth, that we had an interest in that defence; and because they had the courage to propose setting an example to our allies by increasing our own effort.

The silliest of all aspects of the criticisms that Tories had to face was the insistence that the Russian build-up of naval strength against our supply lines was not significant in terms of weight; or, alternatively, that it was not significant in terms of hostile intention. The first point can now be answered in Mr Blackman's cold words, and even colder statistics. "It is a sobering thought," he observes, "that no other country in the world in this day and age of sophistication and inflation can possibly build as many submarines as the Soviet Navy has at the present time." There are 313 conventional and ninety-five nuclear Russian submarines compared with 133 American (including forty-one strategic missile carriers) and thirty-four British, of all types. The second point is answered by reference to that most fun damental of all points of strategy: you prepare to the limits of your strength against the power, not according to the apparent intentions, of the potential enemy; and any negative balance of capacity is made up in improved deployment, and through al liances. On both counts — numerical weakness and inadequacy of strategic insight — Britain's naval position is terrifying, for we can do little, it seems, either to save our interests and ourselves by our exertions, or to encourage others to save us by our example. The blunt truth is that our Navy will grow weaker, not stronger, in the years immediately ahead.

There are three main reasons for this. The first is the failure of the Conservative government to find the means and the courage to follow through in power the strategic policy formulated in Opposition.

The second is the wholly inadequate, and unnecessarily complicated, system of naval procurement in existence in Britain, though, to be fair, naval — like all other military — programmes were severely dislocated by the disastrous shift and incon sistencies of the last Labour government, and particularly of Mr Denis Healey. The third reason is the lack, in a country

which prides itself on its naval tradition, of any influential school of maritime strategic thought, comparable, say to our schools of land, nuclear and even air strategy. Indeed, only one major study The Sea in Modern Strategy by Professor L. W. Martin (Chatto and Windus, 1967,

E1.25) — has appeared in recent years. It is significant that Professor Martin was the critic least hostile to the Government's Cape Defence strategy, though he did show himself — in a long radio conversation with Lord Carrington — to some extent a victim of that syndrome of nostalgic helplessness I mentioned earlier.

Let us take the Government first. Everybody understood that the defence commit

ments made in Opposition would entail some increased real expenditure; and everybody truly concerned for the adequate de fence of his country prayed that the Tories would live up to their reputation as the party which really cared about defence by undertaking that expenditure. It was mor tifying for such people when in the public expenditure cuts of October 1970, Lord Carrington announced that his depart ment's contribution to the new economics would be a stabilisation, albeit temporary, of spending. Thus was valuable momentum lost, and thus again did the Tories fail to live up to the rhetoric of their commitment to national defence. Thus, too, Lord Car rington lost a personal battle. It must be said, as simply, as emphatically, and as often as possible: any sensible defence — and especially naval defence — policy starts with substantiailly increased expenditure, and the willingness of government to say this, and to act upon their sayings, is the litmus paper test of their seriousness. It is also the case that such words and deeds would have the advantage of making defence a subject central to the national political debate. But no conceivable increase in spending could significantly reduce the gap between our general strength and the general strength of our potential enemies. This — apart from other developments in naval strategy which make battle fleet clashes less likely in future — emphasises the need to reconsider our principles of de ployment and the characteristics of the various theatres in which we might wish to become operative. But these tasks cannot be undertaken until we are both sure of the d.esign of the ships we will need, and sure of our capacity to produce them with good speed. It is as yet too early to say how the Government's new Defence Procurement Executive is going to work: but it is still clearly the case that it takes far too long to produce British ships of war; and clear too that one of the reasons for our inefficiency in this respect is the excessive revision of design that goes on during planning and even construction.

This revision is encouraged both by the desire to incorporate new technological de velopments and by the subconscious wish that still dominates the Admiralty Board to build ships for a fleet of the line, rather than for specific tasks of trade protection and local — usually combined — operations. Ships initially designed as light, and for specific tasks, became heavier and multi-purpose, as time goes by: their completion is delayed, and their cost increased.

Without wishing to decry some remarkable recent technological developments, it is nonetheless clear that an inadequate strate gic analysis as well as an inadequate sense of urgency, is brought to bear on naval construction in Britain.

It is here that a school of maritime strategy should come into its own. The promises and threats of the future conduct of war at sea — the use of ships in wars of intervention, the possibilities of limited war on sea as on land, and many other problems — require the application of the widest variety of thought and the produc tion of the widest variety of design. The study, too, of local treaties is of the utmost importance: it was at no distant date that the threat of war between the Philippines and Malaysia over Sarawak was averted by a British naval squadron inter posed between the two powers. It was not, in absolute terms, a powerful squadron, but it was powerful in relation to a likely opponent: it held the balance. One must remember, too, that the most ingenious and successful — in relation to the task faced — construction programme undertaken in Britain was Churchill's in 1939-40. Then he scrapped the costly and lengthy programme of capital construction for a force based on destroyers, for destroyers were the need of the hour. And so it is today that — carriers or cruisers excepted, for one or the other is an integral part of any powerful commando force — the more ex pensive ships are not necessarily what we need, for we no, longer build a Navy for fleet actions against everyone or anyone, but a navy for specific and limited tasks around the world and, with our allies, to protect the Channel, the North Sea, and the Mediterranean. We will have to spend more; we will have to increase speed of construction. But above all we will have to review and understand the tasks of the Royal Navy and appreciate the frightening urgency of being prepared for those tasks.