LONDON --- Defence Analysis will hold its mitts up straightaway: what we outline here is very much what might be called, “the right of arc”, the extreme position, the less/least likely possibility. But then, if what Defence Analysis is about to outline is that unlikely, we wouldn’t be writing this. But, yes other futures are available ....
It is 2026, maybe 2027, and what do UK defence capabilities look like? Bluntly, they look appalling, a complete whisp of what they once were. As the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed Scrooge of what awaited him, so Defence Analysis will do the same ....
Knackered Navy
The crisis in availability of pretty much every platform has accelerated, as was obvious it would in 2023. Because fleet management, maintenance, overhaul, and the underlying infrastructure had been so badly managed from the 2000s onwards, the Royal Navy is, in effect and not by choice, taking a series of capability holidays.
The Type 23 flotilla has fallen off a cliff. The early retirements that started in 2022 and into 2023 (HMSs Monmouth and Montrose) has accelerated. The drive to pretend that HMS Westminster was in any shape to be upgraded has been abandoned – the costs have leaked, and the contractor(s) will not sign up for unlimited liability if they take the work. But HMS Somerset has proved to have equalled HMS Westminster: sure, she was in refit for several years, but, in effect, with all of the work and money spent, it was only ever painting over some pretty serious cracks, and there are persistent engineering problems which cannot be overcome without a tidal wave of cash.
HMS Lancaster started the inevitable slide towards oblivion during her time as the Forward Deployed Escort in the Gulf, and returned home with rust everywhere, looking in as bad shape as she actually was. So, much like HMS Montrose, she is quietly tied up, the RN pretends she is operational, but after six months, there is no hiding the truth. And both HMS Northumberland and Kent, both of which have been “well used” (aka “thrashed”) are faced with either unscheduled – and expensive – refits, or retirement.
The shortage of funds means it is the latter.
The Type 23 fleet by 2027 is down to six hulls – and RN fleet managers fear it will be down to five, maybe even four, pretty soon – and the official out of service date of the last Type 23 is 2035 ....
But, but... the new frigates classes! HMS Glasgow is on trials, sure, as is HMS Venturer, HMSs Cardiff and Active are not far behind. But the build tempo was set at a remarkably slow rate in the late 2010s, and attempts to speed things up always failed on the altar of cost: the RN didn’t have the money to retain the older escorts, while speeding up deliveries of the new ships. And there were not the crews to man both the old and the new ships.
One Type 45 destroyer is still tied up due to a lack of crew, but the age of the class – the oldest ship will be shy of 25-years by then – means that one ship, which had seen maintenance and obsolescence management shaved in the 2010s and 2020s, is looking like a Type 23: too expensive to keep in service.
Despite claiming that the extra tied up Type 45 is “at high readiness, and can be used operationally at short notice”, she is now known in Portsmouth as HMS Doomed.
The Type 45 fleet is down to four operational useable ships – and there are concerns that another ship might also have to be declared unusable.
Crewing issues, both of ships and aircraft, means that keeping two aircraft carriers in anything like constant service has proved to be a bridge too far. Much as happened with the LPDs in the 2010s, one carrier is put into extended readiness, that is tied up alongside with no crew, with a general lack of maintenance.
The plan to retain the Hunt-class MCMVs failed as the RN could not budget to buy new second-hand tender vessels to host unmanned underwater vessels, as well as extending the life of the in-service MCMVs. The UK, the RN, which used to have a fleet of 30 MCMVs, the most capable mine warfare fleet in the entire world, is down to five Hunt-class ships – and they are showing their age – plus two UUV tender vessels – not enough to maintain the Gulf deployment, as well as the growing task for underwater infrastructure protection.
The UK MoD has been trying to “burden share” with Norway, the Netherlands, France, and even Belgium in the North Sea and Western Approaches.
The state where both HMS Albion and Bulwark were tied up, and the deep maintenance period for the latter over-ran, becomes not an anomaly, but the norm. And as a saving, one of the ships isn’t just kept at “extended readiness”, but at “very extended readiness”. As a result, HMS Albion just begins the process of deterioration and rotting.
The decline of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, that started with discontent with pay and conditions in the early-2020s, and actually led to strikes, continued. Now, with a shortfall of over 500 sailors, not only can it not crew both the three Landing Ship (Auxiliary) as well as the Replenishment Ship, it can’t find the crew for three operational Tide-class tankers, so the RN has only two fleet tankers.
Things have become so bad for the Royal Navy that it has had to resort to LinkedIn to find its next Director Submarines -- the two-star admiral responsible for the country's fleet of nuclear-powered attack and missile submarines -- because it has failed to manage its senior personnel ranks as badly as it has its sailors and ratings.
On top of all this, as Defence Analysis revealed last month, the submarine fleet is not facing a cliff edge – it’s gone over it. The cost of upgrading a neglected and knackered HMS Victorious means that she is retired early – although this is not admitted for two years until a document leaks. And the two years when HMS Vanguard was being refuelled, and HMS Victorious was tied up awaiting dock space saw HMSs Vigilant and Vengeance being completely thrashed – and HMS Vigilant’s reactor has time expired.
The UK now operates a patchy-to-unbelievable Continuous At Sea Deterrent on two SSBNs. HMS Dreadnought is afloat, on trials, but is two to three years away from delivery.
HMS Audacious has only just returned from what ended up as a three-year emergent engineering refit, at considerable cost, HMS Astute has gone in for her first deep refit, late, and HMS Ambush is now also tied up at Devonport. The UK has an SSN fleet of four SSNs – HMS Agincourt is on acceptance trials, so is not operationally available.
Army Woes
The dire shape of the Army in the early-2020s has continued .... The first regiment of 57 non-fixed Ajax family vehicles is on trials with the Household Cavalry – again!
The vibration issues – not fixed, merely mitigated – mean that mean times between failure of key sub-systems are far higher than planned for, and this unreliability comes at a high price.
Trials Challenger 3s are trundling around Bovingdon and Salisbury Plain, but serial deliveries have yet to begin.
Meanwhile, despite best efforts, the Army cannot drag together the 59 operationally useable Challenger 2s that are needed to put a coherent armoured regiment into the field.
And the situation has been getting worse. On one hand, the growing obsolescence means that more tanks are being used as Christmas Trees. On the other – and not a bad thing – more tanks, ones in a state to be used on a battlefield, have been gifted to Ukraine.
The extension of Warrior’s life, which in 2023 had no formal plan, and certainly no budget, has ended up exactly where critics – they were all called “Cassandra’s” at the time – forecast. Those making this accusation ignore the fact that Cassandra did, indeed, accurately foretell the future, but was cursed that no-one believed her – said it would: with the fleet falling of the same cliff as so much UK defence equipment.
Behind closed doors, the Army reports that it can barely equip two armoured infantry battalions, needing around 120 Warriors, and this would be an ask.
Some good news, though .... Serial deliveries of Boxer began in late-2024, and around 225 have now been delivered – but many HQ roles are still being fulfilled by FV430-series AFVs from the 1960s .... The 14 Archer 155mm artillery systems bought second-hand by Sweden are fully in-service – but the drive to increase numbers have been hampered by the fact that Andover opened an international competition, as it never wanted Archer in the first place. But lack of budget has hampered efforts here ....
Oh, there is now an actual, recognisable regiment of Land Ceptor SAMs, although deliveries have not been completed. Upgraded MLRS systems, with new rockets, are in-service, with deliveries continuing – but at a slower rate than planned due to the budget woes that affect not only the Army, but all the Services.
The past decade has now seen only 300 new AFVs of all sorts being actually delivered to the Army. Sure, there are 300+ Ajax in existence, but there has been no operational acceptance. Meanwhile, Poland inducts its 2,000th MBT into service with its sixth armoured/mechanised division.
Oh, and the decision to cut Apache attack helicopter operations and training hours as a saving – “it’s only temporary!” – as reported by the National Audit Office in 2023 turned out to see the Army Air Corps operating as a single Apache regiment, rather than three.
The Bowman radio system is now onto BCIP 5.8, with its life extended to past 2030, although it cannot handle the data rates with new systems such as Land Ceptor, and there are serious concerns about whether it is secure any more [Ed: sources tell Defence Analysis at the time that most terrorist movements can tap into Bowman communications ...].
No replacement has yet been selected, and suppliers have basically walked away from the UK saying, “call us when you are actually ready to buy something ....”
Many European NATO nations no longer listen to bombastic claims that the British Army is “a reference Army”, seeing only a once-great institution that talks a good talk, but is not delivering on the ground.
Leadership and command of the Joint Expeditionary Force is taken away from the UK, and given to Finland, but with the HQ in newest NATO member, Sweden.
Air Force Grounded
Despite a last-minute attempt to retain the Tranche 1 Typhoons, and possibly even give them a bit of a make over (as Germany and Spain did, at little cost), the budget squeeze meant that this was not possible, and by November 2025, the last of the remaining 28+ Typhoons went to RAF Cosford as a museum piece.
On December 19, the Ministry of Defence announced it would retire its fleet of Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 1 fighters and use them as sources for spare parts, instead of upgrading them.
So, the RAF was down to 105 Typhoon (several got unfortunately lost in accidents, no pilots lost), and was the owner (as in they held the budget) for the 48 F-35Bs (three of which were trials aircraft, so with no operational use).
Comparisons are invidious, but Germany at this time was at 160 Typhoon and 25 F-35As in-service, with more new-builds to arrive, France was on 190 Rafale, with a target of over 225 looming by just after 2030, and even Italy had over 150 frontline fighters in-service.
But at the same time, the programme to fit the Radar 2 AESA was still in the early production phase, and the first aircraft had only just gone into works for retrofit, with an in-service date of 2029.
The F-35B fleet is, to put it mildly, in a state of flux. It was the intention to receive the first Technology Refresh 3 aircraft in 2023 – but this possibly hasn’t happened, as the first trials aircraft only started flying a month or so ago. TR-3 is an absolutely vital building block for all F-35s, allowing it to proceed to the Block 4 standard which is, in effect, the first fully operational standard, one which will see UK weapons integrated.
However ....
Some 33–35 F-35Bs have, for certain, been delivered not up to the TR-3 standard. As to reach Block 4, TR-3 is required – and this at an extra cost! – the issue of whether the budget was there to upgrade the non-trials aircraft has remained a pertinent one. And an unanswered one, too, as the juggling of the air power budget has proved difficult.
And the multi-million pound budget required to implement Block 4 doesn’t exist, and nor does that for the engine upgrade that will be required to power Block 4! But without these, no UK weapons will be integrated, so the UK would have to buy new stocks of US weapons. For which there is no budget ....
And on top of all this, the longest pole in the air power tent is pilots. Although the MoD has gone quiet, previous questions about pilot numbers for both Typhoon and F-35B noted that neither fleet had the required number of pilots – in the case of the F-35B, 617 Squadron was only able to operate as it had been using some of the limited number of Fleet Air Arm pilots, as well as loan service pilots from the USA and Australia!
The Military Flying Training System has been tweaked – but there are still serious bottlenecks in getting pilots through the system and onto the frontline squadrons.
The (premature?) retirement of the last C-130Js did not see the envelope of A400M being expanded as quickly as it should have, despite the French Air Force managing to get the more modern aircraft certified for a wide variety of missions that are deemed vital in the UK for Special Forces missions. And the budget to buy more A400Ms fell victim to overspends in the rest of the RAF’s budget, so it was still 22 aircraft.
But at the same time, the much-loved, and much-used C-17s were neither getting any younger, nor getting cheaper to operate. The RAF, as the operator of the four longest-used airframes was faced with the wing spars needing to be replaced – something the US customer has not needed to do, as it operates far more, so can spread the hours across the fleet. Budget? Open, unknown, “we’ll let you know once we’ve done the work” was the answer – but everyone knew that for the three C-17s that needed it, you were talking about over £100m each, and there was zero budget for this.
In effect, the UK’s strategic airlift fleet fell to five C-17s ....
And the final straw: Wedgetail didn’t get delivered at the end of 2024. And it didn’t get delivered in 2025, either. A dumbed-down Wedgetail was delivered to the RAF in mid-2026, and they struggled both to man it, but also to operate what was, in effect, a one-off aircraft – the build standards of all three Wedgetails ended up different. The UK had to not only pay more to NATO to provide E-3 AWACS to cover its northern flank in the face of more active Russian Naval Aviation, but it had to do the same with the USAF. And Sweden, seeing the rejected GlobalEye patrolling UK airspace ....
Conclusion
Some, on reading this, will say that this is extremely, overly pessimistic. But Defence Analysis will state that for each and every “bad point” put here, there is grounding in facts, data, events that have happened in 2023 and the couple of years before.
The problem is that “The System” believes in “keep calm, and carry on” – pretend everything is fine, rubbish “detractors”, and just hope that things don’t turn out as badly as you suspect that they will. The complete unwillingness to recognise facts is exemplified by a mid-December Tweet from the account – no, it doesn’t look as if it was hacked! – of the Chief of the General Staff.
Welcoming the appointment of General Sir Roly Walker as the next CGS, it added, “Our Army is transforming to become the most modern and lethal in Europe”. Seriously, you can’t get as self-deceptive as that statement – and believing this is at the heart of the problem.
Is there a solution? Well, owning up to the fact that there are problems, across all the Services, across defence, would be a really good start. As Defence Analysis noted last month, the UK is spending far more on equipment than pretty much any comparator, but is getting less – this system is broken, and pretty much any other version would be better, so why continue with mediocrity and failure?
(EDITOR'S NOTE: This article, written in late November, is remarkably prescient, in that the measures it forecast for 2026 or 2027 were in fact officially announced in the past fortnight, confirming the decline of British military capabilities even as the Ministry of Defence continues to embarass itself by touting non-existent "world-class capabilities" and speaking of aircraft carrier deployments to the Far East when it hasn't the aircraft to operate from them.
The Ministry of Defence announced that two Type 23 frigates -- HMS Westminster and HMS Argyll -- will be retired this year because the Royal Navy does not have the crews to man them, while the Royal Marines' combat capabilities will be undermined by the early retirement of the two ships designed to carry them into combat, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, again because of the lack of sailors to operate them.
The understaffing has become so serious that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the naval support fleet manned by civilians, that it has outsourced its recruitment to SERCO, a private company. MoD figures revealed that the navy, which has 29,000 full-time recruits, is the worst-performing of the services for recruitment, The Times reported Monday, adding that the intake for the RN and Royal Marines dropped by 22.1 per cent in the year to March, compared with the previous year.)
-ends-
