Our island nation must rebuild the Navy because peace at sea doesn’t keep itself

IN 1982, the Argentinian Junta invaded the Falkland Islands to distract its people in the face of intensifying economic turmoil. But they also thought that they could get away with it.

I learnt this when talking to the captured commanding officer of an Argentine submarine. As flight observer on a Wessex 3 helicopter, I had detected his craft on radar and disabled her by dropping depth charges, in one of the first engagements of the war.

‘We didn’t think that you’d be able to come all this way and be able to fight us this quickly,’ he told me. The Argentinians had gambled that Britain was under-prepared – and paid a heavy price. But victory served another purpose.

It sent a forceful message to a more dangerous opponent, the Soviet Union. Having seen the speed with which we could assemble and sail a formidable taskforce to the other side of the world, Moscow was more wary of messing with us.

It is that lesson that should be heeded by our political leaders as they seek to put a price on Britain’s security.

My 36 years as an aviator and warfare officer in the Royal Navy were a continuous illustration of the importance of properly funding our military – and in Britain’s case, of our maritime forces above all.

The sea is the lifeblood of international trade – the physical equivalent of the worldwide web – connecting commodities, goods and markets and carrying most of the world’s data in undersea cables.

Also, my time on operations and in the Ministry of Defence confirmed every day the enduring value of effective capability and credible deterrence. Peace at sea does not keep itself, nor is the freedom of the seas – the freedom to go anywhere, any time you like – guaranteed in the face of adventurist or aggressive states or well-armed terrorist, criminal or sectarian groups.

BRITAIN’S deterrent posture comprises both nuclear and conventional forces. Although nuclear weapons can be delivered by aircraft or land-based systems, the UK has continued, for invulnerability and effectiveness reasons, to house our nuclear arsenal in four ballistic missile submarines: HMS Vanguard, Vengeance, Victorious and Vigilant.

At least one is submerged at sea continuously (24 hours a day, 365 days a year), and has been for 55 years, meaning a potential opponent would not know when and from where the missiles would come. Each of these submarines, which can stay submerged until the food runs out, can fire 16 Trident II D5 missiles, capable of delivering up to five warheads that can be individually targeted.

In recent years, they have carried eight missiles each (in the vain hope that the world would become more peaceful), meaning a maximum of 40 warheads per sub. As far as we know, not one has ever been detected by our opponents, to the extent that in 2009, Vanguard and her French cousin, Le Triomphant, managed to bump into each other in the Atlantic. Mercifully, the collision was low-speed, so the damage was superficial.

In January, the failure of a Trident missile, fired from Vanguard, to fly to its programmed location caused another worry – but it was a spurious one.

Critics said the missile’s failure revealed vulnerabilities and compromised the UK’s deterrent posture. However, older missiles approaching their use-by date are used in these tests, and the launch was to show that the missile could be correctly programmed and encouraged to leave the submarine, reach the surface and achieve flight. Its subsequent trajectory was irrelevant.

And the cost to the UK of this ultimate guarantee of our security? Less, per capita, than the price of house insurance.

Another common misconception is that, as these missiles are manufactured by an American company (Lockheed Martin), their independent use by the UK is compromised. But, be assured, the warheads are British-made and once the missiles are acquired, they are armed, stored, maintained and targeted by British personnel. The chain of command is also exclusively British, from the political authorisation by the Prime Minister to fire, to the commanding officer of the submarine and the weapons- system officer who would release the missiles.

Nuclear weapons have kept our world safe. But that world has changed, with countries such as China, Russia and North Korea explicitly saying they see nuclear weapons not just as deterrents, but as war-fighting systems.

That is why the argument for our nuclear deterrent is even more compelling today, and the prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear device reinforces this. Such is the importance of the nuclear deterrent to the UK and Nato security that the Vanguard class will rightly be replaced in the early 2030s by the Dreadnought class of ballistic missile submarines, with upgraded Trident missiles and a new warhead.

The oceans will, as always, be pivotal to international geopolitics in the 21st century.

Over the past five years, the world has split between two main geopolitical, energy and trading blocs. One comprises China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, who, acting in concert, are seeking to dominate the vast continent of

Eurasia and the waters around it. They talk about having ‘new rules or no rules’ and they are prepared to breach international conventions and treaties to achieve them. Each has put pressure on their respective regions: Russia on Ukraine, Iran on the greater Middle East, China on the East and South China Seas and North Korea on South Korea and Japan.

This ‘axis of autocracy’ is being countered by a loose maritime-democratic bloc led by the United States, comprising Canada, the United Kingdom, parts of Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. All its members are critically dependent on the sea for their security and prosperity, and all follow an international rules-based system.

This is why China and Russia are deploying ever more powerful and technologically advanced navies and paramilitary forces to contest the links that bind the maritime-democratic bloc and its access to the rest of the world.

As a result, new crises, confrontations and conflicts are likely to occur at sea.

THEN there is the proliferating host of terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, capable of attacking international shipping, using sophisticated drones and missile systems normally associated with states.

It may be tempting to assume the US can shoulder the burden of maintaining peace and security at sea on its own. But the US Navy cannot be everywhere at once and needs the assistance of its maritime allies, not least the UK, which aspires to be the leading naval power in Europe.

We are an island nation and the furthest in Europe from any credible land threat. We rely on trade for our prosperity and, in the Channel, we have the best ‘tank trap’ in Europe.

So it is entirely in our own interests that we invest in our maritime and naval capability, to support the US, both as an ally and in our own interests. That is why I strongly support the Mail’s Don’t Leave Us Defenceless campaign.

But the frightening truth is that the Navy is not sufficiently calibrated against the known capabilities of our likely enemies. Our technological sophistication, firepower, depth of stores, trained personnel and ammunition, and the numbers of deployable assets are all severely wanting. We can’t be credible while we have carriers without aircraft; too few, under-armed frigates and destroyers; negligible fleet support; a procurement system that is glacial in delivery, overpriced and ponderous; and insufficient qualified personnel.

In 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falklands, my ship, HMS Antrim, was stored to 95 per cent war stocks (the fuel, stores and ammunition needed to wage war), primed to counter the Soviet Union and its puppet states in the Warsaw Pact, at a moment’s notice. By the end of that first day, we were on our way south from Gibraltar at 110 per cent, topped up from our supply ships and those warships not coming with us. We then went and did the business.

That is what a credible fighting force and deterrent looks like. It is what Britain needs today. Without it, the security we have enjoyed for so long will be imperilled.