On the Defence Command Paper

I've been mulling over this the past week, and just put down the following points as a comment at Navylookout:

For me the biggest missed opportunity of the review is the chance to reform defence procurement (esp. as this was something Dominic Cummins was hoping to fix), so I expect we'll continue to see cost overruns, reduced orders or equipment, and BAE making off like bandits.


The shipbuilding program is more positive, historically we were always planning ahead and had constant build schedules, but this century we seem to have stopped this and just looked to replace stuff as it wore out (looking at the current ships in-service dates it's clear this happened around the time of the Afghan and Iraq wars) and it's good to see talk of continuous production runs and keeping the yards busy.


I'd hope for at least 12 autonomous minehunter units that could be based either ashore or on a ship. However it would be inefficient to use large (and expensive!) frigates for this role, so a smaller mothership would be needed.


What could be an option is to convert one of the Hunts to act as an autonomous minehunter mothership (Atherstone would be a good choice as has been stripped for sale, depending on her condition). If these trials go well do the same with the rest of the Hunts (Sandown's might be too small or not suitable due to their layout) to give 6 or 7 motherships. Their hulls are older but should last another 10 years or so.


Looking further ahead I'd like to see something like the Venari-85 or Dutch/Belgium ships bought, these would be dual-role (MCM with an autonomous unit mounted, OPV without) and could also replace the Rivers and maybe (if stretched?) the Echo's. Ideally, 10-12 would be procured.


As for the Sandown's, when decommissioned as minehunters, short term I'd like to see them retained as patrol ships for use in UK waters, or some could be used as training ships for cadets, URNU's and reservists. I'd also like to see more of the boars ordered for Gibralater ordered to replace the P2000s at Faslane and Portsmouth, the rest I'd transfer along with the B1 Rivers and the Border forces ships to an expanded Coastguard reorganized along the lines of the USA's or Japan's.

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