As tensions rise in the Middle East, the Straits of Hormuz, the
Mediterranean and off the Somali pirate coast, the Royal Navy,
spreading its small ration of jam thinner and thinner, is sending
two ships, the new destroyer HMS Dauntless, and,
reportedly, a Trafalgar-class submarine, to the
Falklands.
Now there is no doubt that Dauntless, at 8,000
tons, is a very capable ship, bigger than many World War II
cruisers, and with an impressive array of weapons. The reported
submarine (its deployment is not confirmed) is also very modern and
is reported to carry 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish
torpedoes. Meanwhile, an anti-British mob in Argentina has cleverly
burnt the HSBC bank, which is Hong-Kong owned, and vowed to attack
a new British business every day (perhaps after investing in a
primer in geography).
There are, however, major problems from the
British point of view: Dauntless is one of only 19
major surface combatants in the whole Royal Navy, a situation that
Admiral Lord West, the former First Sea Lord and professional head
of the Royal Navy, described as “horrifying.” How will the Navy
cope if one of the innumerable mishaps possible at sea puts a ship
out of commission?
The defense cuts under the Cameron government, Lord West
says, have been both too severe and incoherent. They have included
scrapping the RN’s last dedicated aircraft carrier and the Nimrod
long-range aircraft (some broken up before completion), and selling
the Harrier force of short takeoff jets — which at a pinch might
have operated from other ships — to the U.S. Already these
scrapped assets have been sorely missed in Libya.
The center of the Falklands defenses is the Mount Pleasant
air base, with just four aircraft and rapier missiles. Professional
opinion is that taking Mount Pleasant by invasion would be very
difficult and costly, but if it were taken then there is
no way Britain could now assemble a task force to retake it. And
four aircraft does not sound like very many to cover a group of
islands about the area of Wales plus the maritime exclusion
zone
These two ships are obviously a vital card in
the game: they are much more modern than anything the Argentineans
can put up. However, there is a possible downside here: the design
of the Dauntless is impressive-looking but is completely
untested in battle. (Seventy years ago HMS Hood was an
enormously impressive-looking ship, equipped with mighty 15-inch
guns, and the product of hundreds of years of experience, but in
its first serious battle blew up with almost all hands).
In the first modern Falklands campaign, in 1982, the
destroyer HMS Sheffield, then a new ship, was lost after
being hit by a missile that failed to explode but ignited
high-pressure propellant. Naval history is full of stories of
awe-inspiring new ships that proved inadequate — or lethal for
their crews — in the event. In World War I armored cruisers, which
both sides had thought the coming thing, were frequently sunk with
all hands. Three British battle-cruisers blew up at Jutland with
enormous loss of life.
Past history has shown that in sea vs. air combat the
aircraft has the advantage unless the ship concerned has a heavy
escort of fighters, which is plainly not going to be possible here.
It is true that missiles may have altered the equation but seems to
be asking a lot of one ship, no matter how sophisticated, to hold
off wave after wave of attacking jet aircraft and missiles from
relatively nearby bases.
There is another problem, which a layman cannot really
assess or know if Dauntless has solved: the more
sophisticated ships become, and the more packed with electronics,
the more vulnerable they may become. Gone are the days when a ship
might be hit with hundreds of cannon balls and repairing it was a
matter of calling for the bosun and the carpenter. During
Indonesian confrontation a modern British ship was put out of
action for some time because an Indonesian sampan dropped a mortar
bomb in the water beside it and shook up its electronics. A large
modern warship almost approaches a living body in its complexity,
and like a living body, the more complex it becomes, the harder it
is for it to shrug off damage and carry on. The submarine might
also be very useful, but it has an enormous area of sea to patrol,
and has to be in the right place at the right time. A further
question arises: how long can two of the Royal Navy’s best ships be
kept on station with all manner of demands on the Navy’s
desperately overstrained resources elsewhere?
This is not to say for a moment that disaster will
overtake the two British ships in the event of war. They are a
mighty powerful force. Many of the ships’ capabilities are secret,
but one can hardly escape the thought that the previous conflict
showed modern sea power depends on air cover, and that Britain,
without naval aviation, is putting all its eggs in two baskets, and
untried baskets at that.
