The MOD defines Littoral Manoeuvre
as the “exploitation of the sea as an operational manoeuvre space by which a
sea-based, or amphibious force, can influence situations, decisions and events
in the littoral regions of the world. This will be achieved through an
integrated and scalable joint expeditionary capability optimized to conduct
deterrent and coercive activities against hostile shores posing light
opposition.
In simpler terms, the ability to
insert a significant land force from the sea is one of the primary outputs of a
Navy and one of the key attributes of Sea Power. Keeping things equally simple,
this is because the overarching truth of war is that the final effects of any
military operation are felt on land. Theorists of Land Power like to remind
everyone that wars are ultimately won on land, and that is certainly true. As
long as humans will live on land, that will always be the case. The whole
utility of Sea Power is not conquering salt water, but influencing events
ashore through the denial of the sea to the enemy; the protection of own forces
and economy freedom of movement at sea and sea-based strikes through Fires
(missiles, naval gunfire), airpower (the carrier air wing) and land power (the
landing force).
The golden age of Britain coincided
with the historic period that saw economies worldwide at their highest ever
dependency upon the sea. The Royal Navy dominated those times through a form of
sea denial (working to keep the main competitors “trapped” in European waters)
while projecting british power abroad with its ability to put enormous pressure
ashore. The “gunboat” diplomacy was literally built upon the Navy’s ability to
bombard ports and littoral towns into submission, land naval brigades to storm
targets ashore and sail up the major river networks to reach deep inland.
Amphibious warfare became more
complex and demanding over time, and it soon became impossible to land a “naval
brigade” from a single warship and have sufficient strength in it to achieve
decisive results; yet there are signals of a partial return to the age of
“every ship an amphibious ship”. The embarkation of a relevant number of Marines
in frigates and destroyers is becoming increasingly important once more in an
age of hybrid threats. Marines are excellent to counter piracy; Marines can go
ashore for small raids, rescue operations, first response to terrorism or
disasters and for many other tasks, from defence engagement and local capacity
building to more kinetic operations.
In modern times, a fleet on fleet
clash has become a very rare occurrence, while the need for rapid response to
events ashore has increased steadily: gunfire support, deep strike inland,
blockades, counter piracy and disaster relief are frequently required.
The MOD’s Future Character of
Conflict document notes that human populations and their economies remain
dependent on the sea, and they are once more gravitating towards the shore.
‘In the future, we will be unable to avoid being drawn into operations in the urban and littoral regions where the majority of the World’s population live and where political and economic activity is concentrated’. (Future Character Of Conflict)
70% of the world’s urban areas are found within 60 km
from the shoreline, and a further 10% growth in urbanization is expected in the
coming years. 8 of the world’s 12 megacities are in the littoral zone.
‘We will not want to fight in urban areas, but the urban environment represents in my view a highly credible worst case – and we would be foolish indeed to plan to fight only convenient battles against stupid adversaries. Urban areas are where politics, people, resources, infrastructure and thinking enemies converge’
(Designing the Future Army: Ex URBAN WARRIOR 3 First Impressions Report – 14 Nov 11)
The
Army has concluded in its “Agile Warrior” studies that it is highly likely that
over the next ten years it will be called to operate in a densely urbanized
battlefield; and human geography dictates that this is highly likely to happen
close to the sea.
The urbanized littoral
There
is a current of thought that sees the increasingly urbanized littoral as an
issue for amphibious operations. The proliferation of man-made infrastructure on
the coast might negate or complicate beach landings, and the number of ports is
constantly increasing.
In
reality, urbanization of the littoral is at least as much an opportunity as it
is a problem. Landing a military force in absence of port infrastructures is a
very complex and dangerous undertaking. Amphibious forces land on beaches not
because we want to capture a sandy strip of shore, but because the enemy will
be closely guarding its ports. The whole point of any amphibious operation is
to remedy to the impossibility to land directly in a port, and in any major
operation the amphibious force’s first objective would be to secure some port
infrastructure to exploit.
Beaches
are more numerous than ports, more dispersed, and thus far harder to guard and
defend. Littoral manoeuvre seeks first of all to land where the enemy is not. When talking of amphibious assaults most people appear to think of the scenes of Saving Private Ryan, but that is completely misleading. There is no country in the world today that can build up an Atlantic Wall, and the amphibious force commander will always seek a weak spot to violate. Think San Carlos waters: that is an opposed landing, with a very dangerous air threat, but with little immediate presence of enemy troops close to the beach. The Royal Marines were able to land in Egypt as well, during the Suez crisis, without any "Omaha beach" scene. They also stormed Al Faw peninsula in Iraq in 2003, although mostly by helicopter insertion from the sea side, as their supporting vehicles took an indirect route, avoiding the beach initially selected for the assault because it was mined. In that occasion it was not thought necessary to clear the beach, and the risk was simply bypassed.
There is a perception in some quarters that amphibious operations are too risky and are not realistic anymore, but insertion from the sea has actually been one of the most frequent actions the British forces have been asked to carry out beween 1945 and today.
The
ever growing number of harbors and ports on the world’s shores is seen as a negation of action spaces for the amphibious force, but in truth it represents a new opportunity: any port, even a small one, is better
than a beach as it immensely simplifies and speeds up the flow of stores,
vehicles and troops ashore. In light of this single truth, more ports means
that the enemy has even more entry points it needs to guard and protect. This
will force an even greater expenditure of troops and resources in the attempt
to defend the coast. In turn, this will leave beaches even more exposed.
The
amphibious force in the urbanized littoral will need to be able to clear more
and greater man-made obstacles and will need to be prepared to fight in an
urbanized space, but on the other hand will have greater chances to secure port
facilities early on. This makes entry from the sea more viable, not less.
Urbanization
of the littoral also means that more and more economic interests will be
concentrated in “easy” reach of the sea-based force. A highly mobile force
inserted by the sea could rapidly inflict crippling damage to an enemy nation's infrastructure.
A2AD and STRIKE
Anti-Access,
Area Denial (A2AD) is today’s main concern in military planning. Whether we
should consider this a new thing is at the very least debatable, since warfare
has always comprised a whole series of efforts to prevent the enemy’s movement
into a given area. Some area-denial systems have been around for decades (the
ever present mine, but also, to stay in the littoral, the shore-based missile
or gun battery) and others are more recent and descend from the normal
evolution of technology (UAS, the ubiquitous shoulder launched missiles, both
anti-air and anti-tank, all the way up to ballistic missiles, including the
nascent anti-ship ones). Is A2AD truly new? Arguably, no. The means have
evolved, the aims and the application, not so much.
Is
A2AD a reason to abandon amphibious operations? No. What concerns military
planners is not the enemy’s wish to deny an area, as this has been a fact of
life in warfare since the night of times, but the perception that, in the
endless fight between “sword and shield”, the sword currently has the upper
hand.
Whenever
amphibious operations or aircraft carriers are called into question the real
problem that emerges is an evident lack of faith in the current escort ships
and their weapon systems, for example. In the land domain, there is finally an
awakening to the fact that there are rivals out there which could actually
strike western forces by the air, something for decades has been more or less
unthinkable. Different other areas of warfare that the west has neglected for
many years are now, inexorably, advantages that opponents are well equipped to
exploit.
Few
of the problems that compose the A2AD conundrum are genuinely “new”.
The
US and British Army, which both came out of Afghanistan and Iraq in a bad
position and in countries now very much averse to new ground operations abroad,
have immediately picked up on the A2AD discourse to find new arguments for Land
Power. In the US this has generated the Multi Domain Warfare doctrine; in the
UK it has brought about “Joint Land Strike” and the Strike brigade.
The
underlining argument is that in presence of A2AD threats which could deny
access to air force and navy elements, the land forces will manoeuvre in deep
against the adversary to take out key nodes of its multi-layered defences.
There
are many questions connected with this concept, particularly in the British
case which puts way too much emphasis on Ajax and a wheeled 8x8 APC,
formulating highly questionable hypothesis about what they will achieve once
teamed. There are also some merits, however, and the expectation of having to
deal with a wider battlefield involving great distances to cover seems
justified by recent experiences, from Iraq to the Ukraine conflict.
The
Strike Brigade is based on the ambitious concept of deploying a medium armour
force ahead of the heavy armour brigades. From the Air / Sea Port of
Debarkation, the brigade would then be asked to move up to 2000 kilometers to
secure objectives and hit enemy weak points through mobility and a greater
freedom in the choice of routes. Dispersion is the key to Strike, with the
experimentation seeing independent groups from Battlegroup down to Troop level
operating independently in up to 60 points of presence. Among the many doubts
that this concept raises is the very issue of theatre entry. An Air Port of
Debarkation is mentioned but it is pretty much impossible for the UK to ever be
able to deploy a Strike Brigade by air. The US Army once hoped to deploy a
Stryker brigade by air thanks to the USAF’s C-130 fleet, but it soon became
evident that only C-17 had an hope and the whole concept more or less vanished
away. It takes 15 C-17 sorties to deploy a single Stryker company group, which
the US Army keeps at high readiness in support of its air assault component,
and that is with an APC that weights a good 10 tons less than any British Army
MIV candidate. To do the same, the British Army would require the maximum lift capacity the RAF is equipped to express.
The
Strike Brigade, just like the armoured brigade, is firmly tied to a Sea Port of
Debarkation. The crews might well come by air, but their vehicles almost
certainly will not. One of the hypothesis of employment that have circulated
include the “replacement” of an amphibious landing by a debarkation in a
friendly port in a nearby country followed by a road move to the objective, in
order to avoid the enemy coastal defences. While this might have some merit in
some circumstances, unanswered questions include how the Strike Brigade would
deal with the Land and Air firepower available to an enemy well equipped enough
to put up such an A2AD bubble. An enemy with the kind of capability required to
shut the Royal Navy out of the picture will be more than able to batter back
Ajax and wheeled APCs and moreover will have the capability to strike back
against the nearby country which allows the Strike Brigade to disembark. This,
in turn, might well mean that said nearby country will not want to open its
ports to the british contingent to avoid being drawn into the conflict. A2AD includes not only the kinetic means of
area denial, but also the political ones: lack of access to an area can be due
to multiple different factors.
The
need for a sea port is unchanged, and will remain unchanged until air transport
becomes able to deal with the weight and volume associated with military
operations. Today it simply is not an alternative.
As
long as the vast majority of goods in trade and supplies in war will need to
travel on ships, ports will be the key to a country’s future and to the feasibility of any military option.
The
amphibious force is the only instrument the UK has to gain access to a
shoreline when ports, for whatever reason, are not immediately available.
For
the rest, the Strike concept borrows quite a few pages from amphibious forces’
concepts and doctrine. After an amphibious landing it is important to move
rapidly inland and secure objectives before the enemy can respond in force. The
mobility and dispersion of Strike have much in common with the attributes and
needs of littoral manoeuvre.
Increasingly,
amphibious forces around the world are seeking speed and agility to evade the
threats lined up against their operations. Fast landing craft make it possible
to keep the amphibious ships far from the shore, out of range of most weapon
systems. From there, fast landing craft can take multiple directions, further
complicating the task of a defender.
Long
range insertion of troops by helicopter is used to create a defensive screen
around the landing zone and to beat back the enemy presence. The USMC has
brought this concept to its present day pinnacle thanks to the MV-22 Osprey,
that has the range and speed to push one thousand miles inland when
necessary.
Once
ashore, the landing forces are relaying on increasingly mechanized elements
that give the protected mobility and firepower needed to push deep inland.
“Strike” as a concept is familiar to any amphibious force. The USMC is looking for an 8x8 armored vehicle to increase its ability to push rapidly and decisively inland.
The
Royal Marines have sadly fallen behind these developments. They were the first
to employ helicopters for vertical encirclement during the assault on Suez, but
in more recent times their attempt to stay up to date has been frustrated by
lack of funding. Their Fast Landing Craft programme is on hold, leaving them to
operate the terribly slow LCU MK10, which requires the amphibious ships to sit
just a few miles away from the shore. Their Force Protection Craft requirement
remains unanswered, meaning that they lack the fast, agile combat boat they
need to escort the landing craft in and out of the littoral area; to suppress
enemy defensive positions on the coast; to insert small reconnaissance and
raiding teams and to push deep inland exploiting rivers. Their mechanization
has not progressed beyond the Viking, while elsewhere 6x6 and 8x8 are becoming
increasingly common.
 |
| ARES trials: beach landing from an LCU MK10 |
There
is an unjustified disconnect between the Army and the Marines, despite the fact
that their operations are always closely connected. Any “Strike” concept worth
of the name should be very much part of the amphibious capability discussion
and vice-versa.
The
Royal Marines, conversely, have attempted to carry on bypassing the constant cancellation of their equipment programmes by promoting themselves as a lighter, “quasi Special
Forces” element with their “Special Purpose Task Group” approach. This is single Company
groups, inserted chiefly by air and carried by a single ship, useful for very
small scale, very short term raids.
While
this approach has its own uses, it is not amphibious warfare and it will not
represent a strategic option for the UK nor a role substantial enough for the
Royal Marines to survive. There is no specific need for Royal Marines for
boarding an helicopter and going ashore light for a short, quick task. Plenty
of other infantry units, beginning with the PARAs, can do that, and the entire
Corps would end up crushed to death between a Navy short of money for ships and
an Army eager to protect its own capbadges.
 |
| A USMC MEU is always resourced with a troop of Abrams tanks. MBTs remain invaluable for clearing out enemy resistance and provide protected firepower. The british amphibious force should see heavy armour with much greater frequence as well. |
The
amphibious force’s true value is in the fact that it gives a capable, medium to
heavy entry option that air assaults simply cannot match. Ships and landing
craft carry everything that helicopters and cargo aircraft cannot carry or
anyway cannot insert in enemy territory. Landing craft can bring ashore a
mechanized battlegroup mounted in Viking and reinforce it with anything up to
Challenger 2 MBTs. This is the true value of the amphibious force: it deploys
with the protected mobility and firepower needed to carry on complex, demanding
tasks which are beyond the possibilities of an air assault force.
It
is time for the Marines and the Army to forge a much closer alliance and work
together on ensuring that the UK retains an adequate forcible entry capability.
Be a hero where you need to be and
where you can be one
The
UK does not have the budget to do everything it wishes or even needs to do in
order to be a global power. For example it is not in a position to be a major
continental power matching the mass of armoured and mechanized forces fielded
by its allies.
What
it needs to do is decide where it wants “to be a hero” and resource those areas
appropriately.
Amphibious
warfare is one such area. The UK needs to retain its amphibious capability
because:
-
Any
operation it decides to mount abroad will pass through one or more ports.
Without adequate amphibious and port opening capabilities in support, any
future operation will only be possible if someone else secures a port of entry.
It would signal a dramatic loss of operational independence, much more
definitive than the current limitations imposed by lack of mass.
-
As
“Global Britain” attempts to secure new allies and new markets in the Middle
and Far East, its naval group will become more important than ever. The Navy’s
Expeditionary Force will be the face the UK shows to potential allies and
opponents in Asia, in an area where the sea, islands and shores are key. Lacking
the ability to go ashore in force would severely curtail the value and
capability of the task group.
-
There
is every reason to believe that the urbanized littoral is where interests,
risks and opportunities will concentrate. Human populations continue to
concentrate near the shore or along rivers, canals, estuaries and lakes for
their economic value and for their impact on a nation’s road network.
The
UK is in a good position to be a world leader in the amphibious arena as it has
arguably the greatest treasure of know-how of anyone in the West, thanks to a
history of operations that include Suez, the Falklands, Kuwait and Al
Faw. It already has most of the pieces in service and paid for. It already has
one of the most significant amphibious components in NATO.
With
the carriers coming online the big pieces are all in place, and the United
Kingdom, in a rare moment of wisdom and awareness of its potential, had
actually also taken leadership of a NATO Smart Defence
initiative to develop a strategic Port Opening capability to enable theatre
entry. Unfortunately, nothing has ever been heard about it since then, even though this is a
capability that would be simply invaluable both in war and in peace (for
example for disaster relief, such as after the Haiti earthquake, when
establishing a point of easy access from the sea is vital). The UK can be a
world leader in this area, with relatively tiny investment.
The
blueprint for the UK to be a leader and framework nation in littoral manoeuvre
is also the blueprint for the survival of the Royal Marines in the future.
Going lighter and lighter will soon make the Corps redundant. The future of amphibious
capability is “Strike”. While the current Army “Joint Land Strike” concept is
very questionable and the structure proposed for the Strike brigade completely
out of tune with the stated ambition, the value of an expeditionary, mechanized
force is not in question.
Such
a force hinges on a Sea Port of Debarkation, and the Marines are a key
capability to ensure there is an entry point. Unsurprisingly, one of the very
first scenarios to be war-gamed in the simulators at Warminster for the Strike
Experimentation saw the Strike Brigade, supported by the amphibious task group,
enter a notional African state where they faced a “multi-faceted” threat
dispersed in a complex environment.
The
key to the future is going ashore heavy, not light. A mechanized force is
required to face complex threats and deal with vast battlespaces. The Marines
must focus on how to be part of that force, and on how to get a larger army
force where it needs to be. In the short term this means retaining the LPDs
because they are key enablers for such a “heavy” entry.
Longer
term, resurrecting the Fast Landing Craft is a key requirement to increase the
survivability of the whole force by enabling the amphibious vessels to launch
the assault waves from over the horizon.
The
Force Protection Craft should become a primary responsibility of 42 Commando
now that it has been forced into becoming the “Maritime Ops” specialist. The
FPC is needed to accompany the Fast Landing Craft in its long transit from
amphibious ship to shore, protecting it from threats including fast attack
boats, suicide boats and other hybrid threats that could be lurking in the
littoral. The firepower of the FPC would also provide intimate support in the
early phases of the landing. It will be particularly important for suppressing
enemy anti-tank missile teams, which represent a grave danger to the landing
crafts.
The
FPC should also be used to regenerate a true, powerful riverine capability to
perpetuate Strike along the waterways.
 |
| A US Navy Riverine Command Boat (a development of the swedish CB90) operating from a RFA Bay class LSD in the Gulf. These assets provide force protection and reach, including up rivers. They can operate hundreds of miles away from a mothership, turning a single vessel into a "task group" perfect for Littoral operations and counter piracy |
The
Marines and the RLC’s Port regiment should work together around that “Sea Port
Opening” capability that the UK took the lead of within NATO but never did
anything about. Opening a port is fundamental for progressing an operation
after the initial landing: the UK is only equipped to land a single battlegroup,
and can only augment that assault force by reactivating the mothballed LPD and
by taking ships up from trade.
Large
transports, beginning with the Strategic Sealift RoRo vessels (the Point class,
unfortunately cut from 6 to 4 ships in the 2011 round of cuts) need to insert a
larger army force if the operation is to achieve its aims.
What would be lost along with the
Albion class
In
light of the above considerations, few cuts proposals ever made less sense than
the rumored withdrawal of the Albion-class LPDs.
An
Albion can operate 2 Merlin or even 2 Chinooks at the same time, but does not
have a hangar. That is an unfortunate weakness, but when the two LPDs were
designed the expectation was that there would be two LPHs to accompany them.
Surface assault and air assault were deliberately split on two separate
platforms, but problems began very early on when the two LPHs became one,
today’s HMS Ocean.
With
hindsight, a class of two large LHDs, combining the surface assault and air
assault capabilities in a larger hull, would have been a more sustainable
choice, but there is no easy correction now. With air assault needs covered by
the second of the QE class aircraft carriers, it is imperative to maintain the
LPD capability until the ships are due for replacement, in the early 2030s.
The
Bay class LSDs have a flight deck that can land one single Merlin. They have no
hangar. Today they are regularly seen with a shelter that provides an enclosed
maintenance space, but for a major amphibious operation this structure might
actually need to be removed to restore the full capacity of what was designed
as cargo deck.
The
LPD carries 4 LCU versus 1 and has four times more well dock space, enabling
two lanes operations and keeping up operational tempo to enable the delivery of
more waves during one night period. The Bay class ships have a well dock dimensioned
for a single LCU MK10. This was a welcome last-minute addition to their design.
Still, a single Albion carries one LCU MK10 more than the whole fleet of 3 Bay
LSDs put together.
The
importance of the LCU is that it is the only landing craft able to carry any
kind of payload up to a Challenger 2 MBT. The mexeflote raft can carry even
greater payloads but it is extremely slow and unprotected and is more suited to
follow-on reinforcements than first wave insertions.
The LPD carries 4 LCVPs versus zero on the Bay. The latter can only embark them as deck cargo, stealing space otherwise destined to stores and containers. It is worth remembering that an amphibious operation would already see the Marines’ LCACs (light hovercraft) carried on deck, and the group would also carry at least one of the four army workboats that are used to aid Mexeflote ops (towing, tugging etcetera) and dracone ops for delivering fuel ashore.
The LPD carries 4 LCVPs versus zero on the Bay. The latter can only embark them as deck cargo, stealing space otherwise destined to stores and containers. It is worth remembering that an amphibious operation would already see the Marines’ LCACs (light hovercraft) carried on deck, and the group would also carry at least one of the four army workboats that are used to aid Mexeflote ops (towing, tugging etcetera) and dracone ops for delivering fuel ashore.
Some
of the LCVPs should be eventually replaced with the Force Protection Craft. In
2011 the Marines trialed the Swedish Combat Boat 90 and demonstrated its
compatibility with the LCVP davits.
The LPD is fitted with the command and control spaces and communication outfit needed to run the amphibious operation, while the Bays have a much more basic communications fit, which has only been enhanced somewhat in recent years using equipment taken out of the prematurely decommissioned Type 22 Batch 3 frigates.
The Bay has twice as many lane meters of storage space for vehicles and embarks more or less the same number of troops. The tables normally detail 305 for an Albion and 356 for a Bay, but the crew of the LPD includes 40 or more men of the Beach Tactical Party, which goes ashore with the HIPPO beach recovery vehicle, a communications team, excavators and trackway dispenser to open a safe exit from the beach, enable movement of wheeled vehicles on soft terrain and push back landing craft if they ran aground, so the difference is actually much smaller.
Losing the LPD means losing the dedicate amphibious C2 centre; some aviation assault capability; most of the group's landing craft; the tactical beach party; a good share of the capacity for stores within the group and a Company-group worth of accommodations for Marines and support elements.
That is before considering that one third of the Bay class is regularly Gulf-bound, where it serves as MCM mothership, and another ship of the class ends up spending Hurricane season in the Caribbean as a disaster relief first responder. While they could both be recalled ahead of a large amphibious operation, the UK conversely would probably not want to gap those standing tasks in “peacetime”, so that without the LPDs the Marines would often literally have no amphibious ship available at all.
The LPD is fitted with the command and control spaces and communication outfit needed to run the amphibious operation, while the Bays have a much more basic communications fit, which has only been enhanced somewhat in recent years using equipment taken out of the prematurely decommissioned Type 22 Batch 3 frigates.
The Bay has twice as many lane meters of storage space for vehicles and embarks more or less the same number of troops. The tables normally detail 305 for an Albion and 356 for a Bay, but the crew of the LPD includes 40 or more men of the Beach Tactical Party, which goes ashore with the HIPPO beach recovery vehicle, a communications team, excavators and trackway dispenser to open a safe exit from the beach, enable movement of wheeled vehicles on soft terrain and push back landing craft if they ran aground, so the difference is actually much smaller.
Losing the LPD means losing the dedicate amphibious C2 centre; some aviation assault capability; most of the group's landing craft; the tactical beach party; a good share of the capacity for stores within the group and a Company-group worth of accommodations for Marines and support elements.
That is before considering that one third of the Bay class is regularly Gulf-bound, where it serves as MCM mothership, and another ship of the class ends up spending Hurricane season in the Caribbean as a disaster relief first responder. While they could both be recalled ahead of a large amphibious operation, the UK conversely would probably not want to gap those standing tasks in “peacetime”, so that without the LPDs the Marines would often literally have no amphibious ship available at all.
Without
the LPD and its landing craft the UK would no longer be able to insert the
current battlegroup (1800 strong including its support elements) and, moreover,
it would lose the capability to insert a mechanized element. Today, an
amphibious group including an LPD and a couple of Bays can send ashore the
beach tactical party and a whole company group mounted in Viking armoured
vehicles (16 troop carriers, command and recovery vehicles plus 4 mortar
carriers) in a single wave of 6 LCUs. Without LPD this capability is destroyed.
 |
| The Viking provides protected mobility and firepower. It is amphibious, but too slow to routinely proceed on its own from an LPD to the beach. A Royal Marines company group can be mounted, along with its Mortas section, in 20 such vehicles. An |
The
loss of the LPDs would have a completely disproportionate impact on the
amphibious capability of the UK, and any claim that the Bays can fill the gap
is at best misinformed and completely dishonest at worst.
What the UK can have with the Albion
class
Within
a few more years, the bleeding capability gap caused by the early demise of HMS
Ark Royal will be closed with the entry in service of HMS Queen Elizabeth. At
that point, if the UK does not mutilate further its capabilities in the ongoing
“review of the review that isn’t really a review”, the Royal Navy will be able
to match the Expeditionary Strike Groups of the US Navy.
With
one QE class at the center, carrying a company group of Marines in addition to
their helicopters and at least a squadron of F-35B, the group would then have
one Albion and at least two Bay LSDs. The landing force would be closely
comparable to a Marine Expeditionary Unit of the US Marine Corps. This would be
a potent expeditionary force, able to threaten the sea side of any opponent and
valuable enough to gain influence for the UK East of Suez, an area which is
inexorably growing again in importance as the economies of Asia gallop and the
world’s money increasingly goes east.
 |
| The USMC MEU. The United Kingdom lead commando battlegroup resembles this force. Centered on a QE carrier, an LPD and a couple of Bay LSDs, it could field a substantial air element; 6 LCU MK10 and 4 LCVPs. The armoured element would come with Viking, with non-armoured BV-206 vehicles in support. The RM also employ Jackals. |
The
acronym CEPP, Carrier Enabled Power Projection summarizes what the carriers
really are about: they ensure the fleet has the air support it needs to operate
in the congested, cluttered, contested,
connected and constrained environment of current and future warfare. Without organic air power, a fleet
cannot venture far from the air cover coming from land bases. Without a fleet
capable to go into a contested environment, far from home and potentially far
from friendly land bases. there can be no power projection at any serious
scale. With the Navy planning to have one carrier at Very High Readiness (5
days notice to move) and the other at 20 to 30 days notice to move, continuous
carrier capability is a realistic aim.
 |
| A USN Navy Expeditionary Strike Group: the Royal Navy expeditionary group would have Queen Elizabeth in place of the LDH; an LPD and a couple of LSDs plus Type 45s, Type 26s and an SSN, with the RFA in support. A full spectrum response force which would be the face the UK shows to the world. |
Air
power is a fundamental requisite but it is also primarily a support element.
Ground operations of some sort will always be required to achieve the desired
results, and the naval expeditionary force can only be considered complete if
it maintains this equally important element of capability.
The
value of an Expeditionary naval group is summarized as follows:
-
It
safeguards the UK’s forcible entry option, albeit limited by considerations of
mass. The UK simply does not possess the numbers required to mount a large
operation independently; but a powerful naval group preserves a degree of
operational freedom and puts the UK in a position of leadership within a
coalition effort.
- Its
global deployment is a statement of intention that is not matched by any other
short-term deployment form. At the same time, it does not come with the dangers
of a long term presence in foreign territory, which can generate as many bad
feelings as good ones.
- It
is valued by the US as it helps cover all stations, enabling the progressive
shift of US naval groups to the Pacific. The UK has not been able to provide a
comparable level of assistance since its last aircraft carriers helped cover
the gaps created by the US involvement in Vietnam.
- It
represents a capability that, in Europe, only France can, in part, replicate.
The amphibious force is also closely integrated with the Netherlands’ own
Marines and is an enduring connection link between UK and Norway as the Marines
are the UK’s arctic specialists and the designated reinforcement for NATO’s
northern flank.
