Under (financial) pressure: Royal Navy’s uncertain future

This video explores the present and future issues that face the Royal Navy. Ships, technology and ever present financial and budgetary pressure. Where is RN going and what sort of ships and capabilities will it use in the coming decades?

00:00 - Video introduction
00:30 - Importance of the Navy for UK
01:17 - Current and Future Defense Spending
04:10 - Problems of Royal Navy
05:00 - Dreadnought class submarine
06:22 - Royal Navy carriers current status and future plans
10:17 - Royal Navy current and future ships
18:28 - New strategic role
20:18 - Conclusion

If you want to watch our videos without ads, if you want quick replies to any questions you might have, if you want early access scripts and videos, monthly release schedules - become our Patron.

[joedawson]

quality of videos vs quality of comments section on this channel is astounding.

[lukedogwalker]

There is a manpower drain in the RN, just as there usually is in the army and RAF. The reasons are very similar: That people want out is the inevitable result of too few ships and crews being stretched by long deployments and too high an operational tempo, with less and less time for shore jobs/family/personal and career progression. The solution is a combination of more hulls to spread the load, more people retained to man them (by improving pay and conditions) and/or the UK reducing its international commitments to a level the funding will actually support.

I don't currently see any of this happening, although the concept behind the procurement of Type 31 shows that someone is thinking about more hulls with smaller crews for less money, to free up the bigger hulls with bigger crews to do the more important tasks, and maybe get deployment durations down to 6 months or less.

[ElvisFundin]

1. The RN does not rely only on RAF planes. The F-35B is jointly operated by both the RAF and the RN.
2. The UK has 33 F-35B currently in service, not 30 as shown on your graphics.
3. According to the MoD, FC/ASW is due to be operational on T26 in 2028, not in 2030.
4. T26 can handle 2 Merlin or4 Wildcats by using the RR mission bay. (T26 will almost always carry Merlin over Wildcat since Merlin has the dipping sonar)

[jrtstrategicapital]

I just looked up the fact that the UK has 40 Admirals including vice and rear admirals and 70 commissioned ships (Apr 2023) that’s an incredible ratio! 😮 what do they all do? The bureaucracy is stunning…

[Scraps_Underscore]

It's honestly really sad to see the whole UK military decrease in size year by year. Despite this happening since WWII, They still had quite a formidable force for a country their size during the late cold war. They even demonstrated their ability to retake an outlying territory on the other side of the planet. Now their naval power appears doubtful if they were to take on one of several other world powers without the help of NATO or other allies.

[mikebarrett]

Great article. You've actually got a great grasp on the numbers and funding issues face by the RN. Factual, unbiased and accurate. Highly recommended watch

[jasonshen]

seeing 6 destroyer leave the British port in:
1940: sir, they are sending out a reconnaissance force
1980: sir, the 1st fleet has left port
2020: sir, the entire Royal Navy has departed.

[wgwjurz]

French and British making an anti ship missile together. Oh the irony.

[jamesg]

The Royal Navy opted to go for power over quantity. An aircraft carrier costs around £3.7billion, while a frigate costs around £250million. If the RN didn't build the 2 aircraft carriers, it could have built around 30 frigates instead.

This was the sensible option, as no navy in 2023 can call itself a serious navy without carrier strike groups. And there are only 4-5 navies in the world who can operate theirs globally (the Royal Navy being one).

But the small size of the escort fleet can definitely be felt. It is on track to be larger in the early 2030s - but we need those numbers YESTERDAY. 2030s is a distant future, especially with all the problems happening in the world today.

[Cravendale]

Type 26 looks like a great ship, we just need them faster, at least the Type 31 is coming along nicely and with the announcement that they will have mk41 vls it gives them a real boost in firepower.

[lucaj]

Would be realy interesting to have a video, much in the same way as this one, but going over the french's recent military programing law, looking at the state of their military and their plans to ramp up their spending for the 2030s.

[monolitwoods]

Money isn't the only issue, new members have been dropping every year, especially on how they do recruiting now (more focused on diversity politics). At the moment only 1 Vanguard is active while 3 are docked for repairs due to lack of specialists but there is supposed to be 2 active at all times.

[Baddy]

I like it when the UK and France make stuff together. It's like the perfect mix of engineering culture.

[myrsinitaktikoy]

make a video abaut the modernization process of the Greek armed forces, the possible problems and its strategic goals💪

[subodhsarin]

C. Northcote Parkinson, in his book 'Parkinson's Law', has written a very interesting chapter on the Royal Navy. It seems that after WWII, UK's Navy has faced a steady decrease of war vessels, but this decrease is accompanied with an equally steady increase in their non-combatant administrative staff.

He jokes that RN may not be able to deploy many vessels in a war, but they sure can flood the enemy with memorandums and telegrams.

[jrtstrategicapital]

There’s approx 40 Admirals vs approx 17 active combat ships…hmmm..what’s wrong with this ratio 😮?

[debbiegilmour]

The UK government has no real idea how to run a country, let alone maintain a military, besides this military spending is rarely popular.

[DrawnInk]

Need to double the Frigates and Destroyers.

[QALibrary]

The big issue is the government ordered a lot more ships (still being designed and built) and then twice now cut the number of people that can be employed to work on the vessel.

Even without the new ships being built thus expanding the hull numbers... the Royal Navy has to dock other ships to take out an aircraft carrier!

Even then they have to ask NATO to make up the manpower numbers on the ship and other ships for support.

When working outside NATO areas they have to call on the Americans to help out.

[Samthebritishgent]

We need a good 100 billion to modernise our whole force. This will be expensive but not impossible to get