The Royal Navy can no longer rule the waves

MY ANALYSIS PIECE IN THE TIMES TODAY: The failure by the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Montrose, to intervene in time to save the British-flagged oil tanker from being boarded and seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has provoked widespread criticism and anger. The outrage is misplaced when you take into account that the Navy has precisely one warship currently in the Gulf waterway to protect UK commercial vessels. That's 100 miles of waterway. Much has been made of the decision by the government to send a second and then a third warship to beef up the Royal Navy presence in this vital region of the world. But the truth is that HMS Duncan, a Type 45 destroyer, will only serve as a second warship on location for about week before HMS Montrose returns home for routine maintenance. The third warship, HMS Kent, like HMS Montrose, a Type 23 frigate, is not due to arrive in the Gulf until September. The minimal presence of the Royal Navy in one of the world's busiest shipping chokepoints is symptomatic of the state of the navy today. As successive First Sea Lords have pointed out ever since the Falklands campaign in 1982, to survive as a maritime nation - and 95 per cent of Britain's economic activity depends on the oceans - a healthy and robust navy is needed to protect the country's interests. Admiral Lord West of Spithead famously said when he was First Sea Lord that no warship could be in two places at once. But the challenge facing the navy today is not just about numbers. It's about reliability and readiness. Of the six Type 45 destroyers in the navy four are at present out of service for repairs or maintenance. Of the two on operations, one is now heading for the Gulf and the other, HMS Defender, is in the Indian Ocean, a long way from the crisis location. The navy has a total of 77 commissioned ships, including one aircraft carrier, suffering teething problems before entering service, six destroyers, 13 frigates, many of which will be in maintenance, ten nuclear-powered submarines, four of them ballistic-missile deterrent boats and two amphibious assault vessels, HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion. With past squeezes on the UK defence budget the Royal Navy has suffered cutbacks, like the other services. But the decision to build two 65,000-tonne carriers at a cost of more than six billion pounds, before any of the aircraft have been included, has meant the navy budget has snatched more than a fair share of the available cash. Tobias Ellwood, defence minister, yesterday called for more spending on the Royal Navy, and Jeremy Hunt, challenging for Number 10, has pledged to build a bigger navy. However, Britain and the Royal Navy will never rule the ocean waves as they once did. Whichever prime minister or government is in power there will never be enough money to rebuild the navy to even the status it enjoyed when the Falklands was invaded. The navy then had 127 ships in service. It is not all gloom for the Royal Navy. A new generation of frigates are on the way. Eight Type 26 frigates, 60ft longer and 2,000 tonnes heavier than the ageing Type 23s, have been ordered. The first three are being built at a cost of 3.7 billion pounds. Their principal role will by anti-submarine missions. To put this in context: there are today more than 500 submarines in the world operated by 40 navies. Like their sister frigate, the Type 23, this new generation warship will not be able to be everywhere at once.