Iran crisis shines spotlight on ‘threadbare’ Royal Navy

Sidharth Kaushal, senior research fellow in sea power at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think-tank, agreed there was an issue with the navy’s fleet availability. “Over the past decade, there was the idea that the navy should focus heavily on outputs: presence and activity, but with an increasingly old fleet. If you maximise presence with an ageing fleet, things break down even faster than they otherwise would. It has been self-defeating in some respects,” he said. The Type 45 destroyers in particular have had to spend a lot of time in maintenance “due to teething problems” and issues with maintenance, including spare part and engineer shortages. Kaushal also raised well-known concerns about crew numbers in the navy, largely prompted by retention problems.