Singing in the Rain - the military and UK Flooding

Buying Warships from America. Why the Sums Don't Add Up.

An article by highly respected Naval author Mike Critchley over at the Portsmouth News (inspired me to write this piece (link is HERE) It talks on part about how the UK should look to the US to buy more ‘off the shelf’ equipment to try and bring more into service at a lower overall cost.

On paper buying American is often cited alongside ‘just do Commercial Off the Shelf’ (COTS) as a great way of saving the MOD money and enabling the UK to get more bang for its buck. I must be honest though and say that I fundamentally disagree that always buying American is the right solution.

The usual premise is that there is a way that UK could go to the US and get vastly cheaper equipment compared to the so-called gold plated requirements of the MOD. The often cited case is either the Blackhawk, which supposedly was offered to the UK for a very cheap sum some years ago to fill the support helicopter requirement on HERRICK, or the Arleigh Burke destroyer, which has been block built now for 30 years and unit costs are reduced greatly. It’s a great idea isn’t it – buy cheap and then just throw the cheap kit into service.

The problems with this argument start with the fact that the so-called ‘cheap blackhawk’ was nothing of the sort. US equipment prices for US kit often doesn’t include fairly important things like the engine, as they’re counted as ‘Government Furnished Equipment’ and procured separately then mated into the design. Then you need to add in all the so-called ‘bells and whistles’ like communications equipment, kit that is operable with UK requirements and so on, and integrate all the software on the airframe or ship. Software and equipment integration is seriously challenging and the reason costs rise – its all very well saying ‘stick the following pieces of kit on a design’ but if they can’t talk to each other, can’t fight as part of an integrated combat management system or worse actively degrade the performance of other capabilities, then its going to be messy and expensive to fix.

This is of course not taking into account the complete lack of a US spares chain in the UK, which would need to be brought in from scratch, the lack of suitably qualified personnel to operate and maintain the airframe or ship, and the lack of support and maintenance facilities to run them from. All of this can be brought into service, but it comes at a cost, and arguably by the time this is factored in, the cost is equal to or often greater than buying British.

Its often forgotten that in the 1990s the RN looked seriously at purchasing some Ticonderoga class cruisers to cover the air defence gap during the T42/NATO Frigate/CNGF/T45 replacement problems. Reportedly one of the reasons for rejection was the sheer cost involved of integrating several very different and non standard vessels into the RN, with the considerable headache of how to solve the manpower and supply chain issues just to operate them all, let alone software and communications integration.

USS ARLEIGH BURKE (DDG 51)

Lets assume though that the RN puts forward a case to bolster its force through the purchase of four Arleigh Burke class destroyers. They’re yesterdays technology of course, as the US has struggled to get any credible new build designs into serial production for decades now, but they’re still a capable and potent vessel.

To even buy American means negotiating the challenging hurdle of getting past the ‘Foreign Military Sales’ (FMS) case and getting Congressional approval to do so. In simple terms, to buy, support and operate a new build ship from the US means placing your independence and sovereignty in the hands of the US Government in perpetuity. If their largesse is lost, and they refuse to approve sales, then the UK ability to operate a vessel is arguably lost.

Similarly, FMS places in American hands the ability to decree the purchase rate for spare parts and equipment. It is bought at the pace dictated by the US, perhaps to support operational needs, but often arguably in the name of supporting the US defence industry and congressional districts. To keep operating the equipment means buying what you are told, when you are told, and directly subsidising the US and not UK industry in the process.

Of course you could try and buy a non-standard DDG51 and kit it out to UK standards- to do this would mean taking the design, ripping out all the US bits you don’t want and then putting UK bits in. However this may not be approved by the FMS case, and more importantly adds an enormous bill to the cost as you take a design intended to work one way and try to make it work very differently again.

Then you have to look at the wider industrial implications – its not just the big suppliers who matter, but the small-medium enterprises that really need consistent support to survive. If you suddenly announce that the bulk of your naval construction work for years to come is being divested to the US, these companies financial ability to survive, to create new technology and to be present to bid when the UK build orders come again is doubtful. The margins are extremely tight in the defence sector, and its possible that a move to buying American could cause a lot of them to go under. You may buy American to save money, but in turn, you may be forced into a long term relationship as your specialist suppliers no longer exist in the domestic industrial market.

You have then to consider the national sovereignty argument – one reason the UK relies on UK built capability is because it gives freedom of action and manoeuvre to upgrade the hulls, to place whatever systems you like on them and to grow the platform to meet your own national requirements. Many US FMS sales don’t work like this – the customer is provided with a sealed box, or US staff to operate it. To even open the seals is to risk the entire relationship falling apart, and if you’ve not got an industry to turn to then that can be difficult. Essentially you as a nation have no say over the electronic components that the US provides, how they are serviced and you have no ability to influence them or know how to upgrade or modify them. To buy American can be to risk a high level of national independence in the trade off to acquire short term capability.

The real problem is that while its easy to assume the country you buy from will always be your ally, times change. Russia is experiencing problems after the change in the global situation saw the collapse of its purchase of Mistral class LPDs, which are now going to Egypt. Instead Russia is scrambling around trying to invent a new design which may (or based on their track record) may not enter service some years from now. Russia is also reliant on the Ukraine for many engine parts for their navy – the ongoing tensions there means that the supply of parts no longer happens, and in time the Russian navy is going to struggle to keep itself at sea. Purchasing overseas can save money, and give early access to capability that is otherwise unobtainable, but it does come at a price.

Finally, even if the destroyers entered UK service, you’d need to carefully consider how to integrate such a vastly different design into the UK concept. Assuming the brief is to save money, by bringing 4 US standard DDG51s over, they would have totally different crew concepts of employment communications, propulsion, NBCD, combat systems, weapons, munitions, helicopters, accommodation, life support and other issues to name but a few. The RN has historically struggled to work out what to do with ‘Orphan classes’ (e.g. HMS MERMAID) as they often rely more support than is possible or effective to do (hence the move to just two ship classes at present – namely to save money).

Don’t forget of course that you are reliant on the vagaries of the US supply chain, and that if a war occurred, the chances are that you’d go to the bottom of the priority pile, with US assets taking priority. Is the UK comfortable that it may not get the spare parts it needs to keep a ship at sea and that it will always play second string to the US Navy in this respect? What happens if the UK went to war on a national issue (e.g. Falklands) and found the US Government wasn’t willing to provide the spare parts needed?

If on the other hand you then wanted to kit the vessels out to a UK standard, the question is where to start? Who is paying for the integration work for the vessels, is modification covered by the sales agreement? What are the ITAR (technology transfer regulation) implications of such a move and how would it happen? To take just one simple example, putting a UK secure IT network for UK EYES ONLY material onto the ship would mean changing the entire IT capability, bolting on new kit that the ship wasn’t designed or intended to carry and coming at considerable cost. That’s just to send an email from the ship, let alone fight it.

There is the wider issue too as to whether the US values client states in the same way as it values genuine partners. The reason the UK brings value to the US is its ability to provide operationally independent capability capable of war fighting at the very highest level without recourse to others for help. This is merged with world class industry and an ability to produce genuinely innovative solutions to capability problems – often taken up or mirrored by the US and other allies.

To move to a more client state relationship in order to put more ships at sea more cheaply would fundamentally mean changing the nature of the UK relationship with the US, threatening the independence and the ability to add value in the same way. Arguably an RN operating DDG51s is not in the best interest of the USN for a variety of reasons.

There will always be some element of exporting equipment in from other countries, and the UK does use a lot of US derived equipment in some areas.  But it pays to prevent yourself from being too beholden on one nation for support – not only does it not save money, but it significantly constrains your freedom of action and ability to operate without the active approval and support of a foreign nation. Some smaller powers are prepared to make this trade off, knowing that their own industrial base is more limited, or that the realistic prospect of their taking unilateral action is so slight as to not be worth it.

Its fair to say buying national capability seems expensive, but when costed up is arguably no less expensive than buying from the US and adapting the kit to meet UK standards – its just the headline figures that are cheaper. To buy US to save money is an alluring argument, but one that is fundamentally built on dangerous assumptions that could pose a real challenge to the ongoing ability of the Royal Navy to work effectively on operations. It should not be encouraged.

An enduring blitzkrieg?

The Daily Telegraph had a commentary recently by Andrew Gilligan which complained that despite claims that the UK would ‘blitz’ targets in Syria, there is no sign of it actually occurring, and thus the UK isn’t a major military player in the campaign. These sort of articles are frustrating because they fundamentally ignore the realities of modern war. While its easy to want to imagine that the moment an operation is approved, the sky should darken with the weight of airpower descending to flatten the opposition, things aren’t really as easy as that in reality.

The perception during the World War Two and the Cold War was that airpower was something that could provide quick responses, wiping out armour and infantry with ease, and smashing enemy command posts with little difficulty. The first Gulf War did little to counter this impression, and if anything highlighted how easy it can be in benign environments with control of the air all but assured and no real air defence threat present to dominate the land environment. In those circumstances, where you have a clearly defined threat and set of targets, it is easy to employ airpower with significant effect.

The problem we face today is that the enemy is one who we cannot compile an ORBAT for in the same way as volumes were done for the Russians or Iraqis. This is primarily an intelligence gathering battle, slowly but surely understanding the war we are fighting, the way our enemy works and trying to understand his pattern of life and activities.

There is no point in expending vast amounts of expensive ordnance wiping out abandoned buildings or empty positions. The media often think war is like a video game where one enemy after another runs at you and needs to be shot or else. In fact modern war is a far more complex and challenging business – its often slow, with little discernible action occurring, interspersed with occasional outbreaks of sheer terror.

The difficulty for any aerial intervention is that it needs to know what to target, when and why. In a warzone where there are flexible front lines, and fighters who resemble civilians, and civilians who resemble fighters, trying to build up this understanding takes time. It also takes time to work out where to strike, which facilities are used, what are actually schools or hospitals and what the pattern of life is. Some may expect UK jets to roar into action and drop bombs as they wish, but in fact weapons release is the exception rather than the rule – why expend ordnance for no reason, or worse on targets that perhaps are not what you think they are?

The air war in Syria will be slow, it needs time to establish a routine and work out what to strike and when. We cannot assume it will be over by Christmas – to do that means working out what victory looks like and what it is we want to deal with when the war is over. Instead this is a slowly burning campaign, a missile here, a bomb there. It relies on our opponents to provide us with credible targets, not bombing indiscriminately in the hope of hitting something useful. In many ways it resembles the No Fly Zones over Iraq in the early 1990s, where for over a decade the UK and US fought a practically undeclared war against Iraqi air defences, often releasing weapons when required; this quickly became a forgotten campaign.

As the campaign progresses targets may become clearer, or they may become more fleeting as the enemy lurks away from the reach of the air. It is telling that even the US armed forces, who make up nearly 80% of the airpower in the region are operating at a relatively low tempo of strikes – this isn’t because of a lack of airpower, but because this is a campaign that is slow and effective. This will probably not be a war of dambusters and sweeping strikes, but a methodical approach which delivers results with minimal collateral damage and maximum effect on our enemies.

There is always a natural desire to want to do as much as possible as quickly as possible – the so-called ‘shock and awe’ approach – witness for instance the sight of Charles De Gaulle, the sole French aircraft carrier deploying to conduct strikes in Syria, in part as a response to the Paris attacks. In the short term, she adds considerable power and capability, but at the cost of  tying up the sole French carrier as part of a wider campaign, and needing to come off station at some point soon for repairs and refit, without a French replacement.

The UK approach, of keeping a numerically small but sustainable and enormously capable force deployed to the Middle East seems eminently sensible. It provides enough mass to deal with most credible threats that are likely to be faced (essentially an insurgent force with limited capability), but can be kept there for the enduring future. To deploy a larger multi-squadron force would be feasible, but would place strain on long term sustainment, and cause personnel disruption that could be difficult downstream – too many long deployments will always test the goodwill of people, who may easily be tempted elsewhere for the benefits of a family life.

We also forget just how capable modern aircraft are – focusing on numbers is but one part of the problem. The modern Typhoon and Tornado combination provide an astounding level of air defence, air to ground and ISTAR capability, and can quickly be retasked – for instance in Libya the Typhoons there were flying air defence and ground attack missions within the same sortie. You don’t need 100 aircraft to have an effect now when the modern missiles can easily hit the precise target they’re aiming at with little risk of missing. Previously you’d have had to drop ‘dumb bombs’ which would miss, or go back so many times that you’d need multiples of aircraft to achieve the same effect as one can do now.

We’re in this for the long term and unlike many of our NATO allies and coalition partners, we have sufficient mass and capability to deploy a sustainable and credible long term presence in the region. So while the initial numbers may seem small to some, don’t forget that this is an enduring commitment and that it will be there for quite some time to come in addition to a wide range of other operations going on around the world at any one time. For many nations, this sort of deployment is the one thing that they can do, instead of other deployments.

So for me at least, I’m not worried about the idea that somehow our contribution is worthless because I don’t think that’s the case at all. We’re pulling our weight here and around the world, and helping in a measured sustainable way. 

Rusting out into the sunset - is it the end for the Royal Canadian Navy?

The Canadian Navy is an organisation that I’ve long been fascinated by - its history, culture and quiet decline in size, but not professionalism are simultaneously gripping and tragic. In many ways the Commonwealth Navies represent a vision of what could come to pass for the Royal Navy in years to come if sufficient funding isn’t allocated to it.

The one constant in recent Canadian naval history is the deep reluctance of Canadian politicians to actually order warships (proper warships), but instead rely on a legion of powerpoint presentations to talk about Canadas great naval future on whichever planned shipbuilding programme is in vogue that day.

The root of Canadian problems in recent years stems back to a lack of funding to replace the two classes of ship that have really made up the mainstay of the Canadian fleet since the end of the Cold War – the Iroquois class destroyers (the 280s) and the Halifax class frigates (330s). The 280s have their roots in the early 1960s, optimised as four big helicopter carrying destroyers intended to tackle soviet submarines in a cold war conflict. Heavily modernised throughout the Cold War and beyond, they have long been worked hard and are in challenging material state. Two were paid off in June, but one (HMCS ATHABASKAN) continues on, now well past 40 years old.

The 330s were optimised as ASW frigates to replace the post war construction types (Canada built a variety of excellent modified Type 12 frigates) and provide a more modern capability to the fleet during the much needed 1980s modernisation period (a time which even saw the Canadians contemplate acquisition of SSNs). A total of 12 hulls were built, entering service from 1992 by two shipyards which were effectively established to build them, but then failed to secure any follow on orders.  The result has been that since the mid-1990s, the Canadians have had to rely on two primary ship classes, getting ever older, but without any sign of actual hulls hitting the water (or even having steel cut) to replace them.

Meanwhile their tanker situation got even worse, originally there were three tankers (the Protector class) dating back to the 1960s which provided the fleet train capability. Age and infirmity has again reared its ugly head and these vessels have all now been paid off without (to date) replacement. In the interim Canada has been contemplating a variety of alternatives, including the chartering of tanker ‘sea days’ from nations like Spain and Chile, and deploying contingents onto foreign vessels to keep critical maritime skills alive.

Today there are two great hopes for the future of Canadian procurement – firstly the existence of Joint Support Ships (essentially a heavily modified Berlin class AOR) and a Single Surface Combatant intended to provide 15 escort ships against a total budget of some nearly $30 billion . In reality both programmes seem highly unlikely to deliver as anticipated – the SSC programme has been through various iterations, and yet despite this the number of hulls planned has never officially dropped down, despite inflation and other costs occurring. In 2011 a contract was awarded worth $25 billion to build new escorts and tankers for the Canadian Navy, but to date steel has not been cut on a single vessel.

The plan appears to be to construct some form of design in Canada (whether foreign or home design is not completely clear yet) through a single company. This in turn was intended to provide 15 hulls optimistically hitting the water from 2018 onwards. To put this in sharp perspective, Canada is currently contemplating trying to establish a highly complex warship construction facility from scratch, to build, integrate, operate and deploy these vessels in a hugely ambitious time frame, when it is nearly 20 years since they last went through a similar process.

What is likely in reality is that the programme will further slip, that there will not be vessels in the water as planned and that the budget which is going to be ever more challenged will not be available to afford anywhere near as many as 15 hulls. The RCN is likely to find itself in a similar situation to the RN over the Type 45 programme which went from 12 planned hulls to 6, but the cost savings were minimal as production costs decrease as programmes continue due to efficiencies of scale. In other words Canada will be paying more for less…

In practical terms, we appear to be near the point where Canada ceases to have a credible blue water navy. With a surface fleet where the youngest escort is 19 years old, and with credible replacements realistically half a decade away, it is hard to see how the Canadians can continue to operate at the high end of the warfighting spectrum with taking serious and significant risks.

Halifax Class Frigate

The one tiny glimmer of hope is that there are plans afoot to do an enormously ambitious and complex conversion of a merchant ship into a stop gap AOR to provide a limited tanker capability (replacing 3 platforms with 1) for a limited time until the putative JSS arrive. In reality the programme (known as Project Resolve) will provide a short term (2-3 year) cover but one cannot help but suspect that this make-work solution will in time become the only tanker left to the Canadians. It seems unlikely that having provided this ship, that she will be disposed of so quickly, particularly if construction continues and budgets tighten. That of course assumes the conversion works to time and to cost, which can never be assured.

Whatever the end, the reality is that for several years to come, Canada will be without a credible tanker on at least one coast, and reliant on the largesse and goodwill of NATO or Pacific Rim allies to support her ships on deployment.  Why does this matter so much? Well the imminent demise of a NATO navy is never a good sign – it’s something that reduces the number of credible warships available to commit to NATO missions, and increases the burden on those countries who do have vessels.

It highlights the reality that warship building is an immensely complex and time consuming business – if you drop out of the game and take a gap, even for a short time, the skills fade is considerable, as is the cost increase. You only need to look at the experience of the Royal Navy in trying to regain skills as the production of the ASTUTE class was ever more delayed to realise that even a short gap can have huge consequences. In the case of Canada the reality is that it will be nearly 25 years since they last built an escort vessel – there are not likely to be many people out there still in work with the skills and experience of doing it, and the build programme is unlikely to be smooth.

For the Royal Navy, what is happening to Canada should serve as a warning that further delays to the Type 26 Frigate could prove ultimately very costly. The loss of a national ship building capability is great if you want to procrastinate and not order new vessels, but proves enormously expensive when you decide you still want to be a maritime power. It also highlights the strong allure of ‘nationally designed and built’ warships which are seen as a symbol of national pride.

This is the curious irony of modern warship design – many nations are currently in the market for new escorts, yet all aspire to build their own home-grown design. Meanwhile the designs talk about exportability as key parts of the means to reduce cost – in other words many nations want to build their own, yet expect to export to others in exactly the same boat. Unlike many military bits of hardware, ships are a very strong symbol of national pride and importance. Those ‘top tier’ navies want their own vessels, not just for sentimental nationality reasons, but also to give them control over the design and ensure they have a hull which meets their needs and is upgradeable as they wish. Reliance on overseas manufacturers is never great when you want to be certain your supply chain and export licences will come through when required.

But, for Canada it is possibly approaching the point where it is too late to do anything other than buy a foreign design. The fleet is aging and the Halifax class are approaching the point where they cannot easily be upgraded or modified. Much as throwing good money after an old car becomes pointless after a while, a decision will need to be taken soon as to when to stop spending the money. In the interim I suspect most Canadian Admirals will be praying that a class wide fault that can’t be rectified isn’t identified, as if the 330s can’t go to sea, then that is the end of Canada as a seagoing power.