The Royal Navy should mothball out-of-date HMS Albion and Bulwark
SIR – The Government is quite right to consider disposing of the Royal Navy’s amphibious assault ships Albion and Bulwark, given the pressures on the defence budget (report, October 26).
The Navy faces a manpower crisis. Apart from the new carriers, these two Albion-class ships are the most manpower-intensive in the fleet, yet are irrelevant to modern warfare. They require five times the manpower of the three similarly capable Bay-class ships operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.
Albion and Bulwark lack hangar facilities (a prerequisite for deploying amphibious helicopters). Their landing craft are painfully slow and would fall easy prey to shore troops (or terrorists) with shoulder-launched weapons.
As their predecessors during the Falklands War demonstrated, to achieve a meaningful amphibious laydown rate on a beach, these ships must be positioned so close inshore that they are vulnerable to being sunk.
The destroyer HMS Liverpool’s run-in with shore-based artillery off Libya in 2011 (which could have sunk her) should set alarm bells ringing. Amphibious approaches used to take place in silence, under cover of darkness, but modern night vision equipment and satellite tracking have eroded the protection that this affords.
Many may wish to think otherwise, but Britain lost the capability to mount opposed beach landings by the early Seventies. This was recognised by the 1981 Nott defence review.
When landings during the 1982 Falklands War were opposed, the near-decimation of ships at San Carlos and the tragedy of the Welsh Guards at Bluff Cove were the result. Things would have been done better by landing troops inland (on a smaller scale) by helicopter under air cover.
Britain would be foolish ever to attempt beach landings of this type in future. Meanwhile, unopposed landings, as part of disaster relief or military reinforcement, are best done by commercial or Royal Fleet Auxiliary roll-on-roll-off ships, or via helicopter from “flat-top” ships.
When they were finally ordered in the late Nineties, the Albion-class ships were already an anachronism. One of the more regrettable decisions of the 2010 defence review was to sell off one of the four Bay-class landing ships, which are far more efficient.
I would recommend the Government to mothball Albion and Bulwark, rather than dispose of them altogether. They are barely 15 years old and their sale or scrap value would be insignificant. HMS Ocean should be retained and given a modest refit.
This would leave the Royal Navy a modern and potent amphibious fleet. Dr Mark Campbell-roddis
Dunblane, Perthshire
SIR – The cost of maintaining, manning and running HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark should be transferred to the ring-fenced overseas aid budget.
Both ships could then be designated for disaster relief around the world and remain available to the Royal Navy in time of conflict. Christopher Gill
Bridgnorth, Shropshire