Extracts from Westminster Hall debate on Carrier Strike Strategy - Feb 28
|
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con):..I will start by placing myself on
the date spectrum, as it were. One of my earliest memories is of
HMS Hermes returning from the Falklands war. I was very
young at the time, but I remember very well that very large grey
carrier nosing slowly into Portsmouth harbour, surrounded by many
small ships welcoming it back. I was particularly struck by the
fact that she was rusted and battered from having been at sea for
months on end—battered but victorious...Request free trial
Robert Courts (Witney)
(Con):..I will start by placing myself on the date
spectrum, as it were. One of my earliest memories is of HMS Hermes
returning from the Falklands war. I was very young
at the time, but I remember very well that very large grey carrier
nosing slowly into Portsmouth harbour, surrounded by many small
ships welcoming it back. I was particularly struck by the fact that
she was rusted and battered from having been at sea for months on
end—battered but victorious at the end of that unique campaign. I
well remember the white uniforms of the sailors lined up in perfect
formation on the deck, and the noses of our little Sea Harriers,
which in the freezing south Atlantic of 1982 had proved themselves
to be an air defence system second to none...
...The return of Britain to that big carrier game must also be accompanied by a strategic philosophy of what carriers are about and how they are to be used. For 20 years or so there has been a tacit, if not expressed, understanding that Britain will probably not act alone in another military conflict, or at least not a major one. We will act with allies, most likely with NATO, and hardly ever without the Americans offering support in one form or another. It is sadly inconceivable that we could undertake an operation such as the Falklands again. In 1982, we had approximately 60 destroyers and frigates. That taskforce comprised 127 ships, consisting of 43 royal naval vessels, 22 from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and 62 merchant ships. At the end of the 1980s, the Royal Navy had two aircraft carriers, seven amphibious ships, 13 destroyers and 35 frigates. After the 2010 strategic defence review, their combined number declined to approximately 19, and remains at roughly that level. In November 2018, there were 75 commissioned ships in the Royal Navy. Twenty of those are major surface combatants, including six guided missile destroyers—the Type 45s, which are primarily air defence destroyers—as well as 13 frigates and the new aircraft carrier.... Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He is making a brilliant speech. I am just thinking about the point he made earlier about the improbability or unlikeliness of us using the carrier fleet to act unilaterally. Although it might be difficult to imagine such circumstances, we cannot rule them out. There may be a time when we will have to act unilaterally, possibly on a smaller scale than the Falklands conflict. It is also not strictly easy to make a comparison between the carrier fleet today and what we sent to the Falklands. The capabilities are infinitely greater, even if it is smaller in size. Robert Courts: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who must have read my speech in advance, because I will go on to make exactly that point. If he will forgive me, rather than respond directly to his intervention I will move on to the next part of my speech. In the Falklands, as I have said, we had approximately 60 destroyers and frigates as escorts. Of those, eight destroyers and 15 frigates were part of the taskforce. In the course of that conflict, four of those were lost and many more were damaged, some very seriously. The initial concern is that a similar impact today would destroy about one third of the Royal Navy’s air defence fleet, which would be unsustainable. Of course, we need more than the minimum deployed in case such damage takes place. I appreciate, as my hon. Friend said, that history never repeats itself exactly, and I entirely accept that the Falklands was a one-off, probably unique event. We would need many more ships available if we were looking to support an invasion force, as we were then, particularly when operating at the other end of the world, a long way from supply chains. I entirely accept that, and the parallels are not precise.
I accept entirely that the Type 45s are vastly more capable than
the Type 42s that they replaced. It is also true that they are
the best in the world as air defence destroyers. Essentially,
they combine the Ticonderoga and Arleigh Burke mission platform
into one. They are better than each of them on a
platform-to-platform basis, but it is not always the case that we
can do the job with fewer. The Type 42s were the cutting-edge
destroyers of their day, but as soon as the Falklands war
started, we found their weaknesses ruthlessly exposed,
particularly with regard to the survivability of damage. That was
so horrifyingly exposed in the case of HMS Sheffield. I simply
suggest that there comes a point where we need mass... |