Royal Navy to sell its only vessel that can repair warships at sea

DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT THE Navy’s only vessel for repairing damaged warships at sea will be sold off four years early because of cost cutting, the Ministry of Defence has said.

RFA Diligence has been repairing Royal Navy vessels since the Falklands War and had been due to continue working until the end of the decade, but will now be sold immediately.

The sale comes just three years after the vessel was given a major refit to extend 367ft vessel was built in 1981 as a commercial support ship for North Sea rigs, but was chartered by the government for the Falklands War and spent the campaign repairing warships damaged by Argentine air attacks. The ship was then bought outright for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in 1983.

Equipped with cranes and engineering workshops and able to provide power and water for ships alongside, the vessel can repair frigates, destroyers, submarines and minesweepers. It has also been used for monitoring shipping in the Gulf.

Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord, said the decision to scrap the ship without a replacement was an “error”. He said the ability to repair ships far from home would become particularly important once the new aircraft carriers began operating.

The ship had been “invaluable” when he had commanded a navy group in the Far East in the mid Nineties. “That sort of floating maintenance capacity is very useful,” he said. “It’s yet again a diminution of our naval capability, particularly our area capability.”

A source in the Royal Navy said the cost of keeping the ageing ship running when it was the only one of its kind was too high. Both the Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary are also suffering from a critical shortage of sailors.