British Military Current Events

[Cloud Cover]

Royal Navy could finally be sunk by drastic budget cuts …. Pretty depressing times for the RN.

(Nice image of the proposed Type 83, which will likely never be built…)

Ministers could delay shipbuilding in £10bn MoD budget cut

Major Royal Navy programmes face years of delays as the departments attempts to plug a multibillion-pound gap in its spending plans

www.thetimes.com

 

[daftandbarmy]

My first thought was 'only 175?'

Nearly 200 sailors serving in Britain’s nuclear submarine force caught doing hard drugs from ecstasy to cocaine​

A total of 175 submariners tested positive for narcotics between 2018 and 2024, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and obtained by the Telegraph.

The random testing caught out 52 people who were serving on a submarine at the time.

Some also tested positive for steroids, a banned substance, and benzodiazepine, which includes drugs like Xanax and Valium.

The figures have sparked fears of the security on Britain’s ultra-important nuclear submarines, and the chance of blackmail of their crews.

Nearly 200 sailors serving in UK's nuke submarine force caught doing hard drugs

NEARLY 200 sailors serving in Britain’s elite nuclear submarine force have been caught using hard drugs over the past seven years. Royal Navy crew members tested positive for an array of ille…

www.thesun.co.uk

 

[Colin Parkinson]

From the web:

Mark Felton did a video on the current state of the Royal Navy - UNFORTUNATELY he got some of his info wrong - It is FAR WORSE...
SUBMARINES:
The Royal Navy does not have 10 submarines, it has 9.
FOUR are Vanguard Class ISBM Nuclear Missile subs: One is supposed to be on patrol at any time, another will be in refit, one in deep maintenance / or coming out of refit, one in work up / or extended readiness. However, the Vanguard Class are getting old and being pushed to their limits, so it is speculated there have been gaps in operational deployment.
FIVE are Astute Class SSN Nuclear subs: Of these FOUR are in REFIT (this is a complete failure of the Royal Navy's rule of thirds - where one third of military forces are operational, one third are preparing for operations, and one third are recuperating). ONE HMS Anson is operational it was recently deployed to Perth Australia as part of an AUKUS training mission.
FRIGATES:
The Royal Navy does not have 7 frigates (Wikipedia is WRONG) HMS Lancaster was decommissioned in Bahrain just weeks prior to the outbreak of the Iran War, it is now waiting disposal but was in a very poor state of maintenance when laid up. It is not know if the ship has begun being broken up.
Of the remaining SIX frigates, only TWO are operational (not all as Mark Felton reported). THREE are in REFIT, one is in deep maintenance, and TWO are apparently operational (although the RN is currently using Patrol vessels to escort Russian ships past UK - so this may suggest they are not as operational as they should be).
DESTROYERS: (He was correct...)
The Royal Navy has SIX - THREE are in Refit, ONE is in deep maintenance, and TWO are operational.
OFFSHORE PATROL VESSELS:
The Royal Navy currently has 8 OPV's (not 7) it's not clear how many are operational, in maintenance or refit, but it's likely that 5 are operational - Of these ONE in permanently stationed in the South Atlantic, TWO are permanently stationed in the Pacific, and ONE is usually stationed in the Caribbean. That leaves FOUR - of which one is being used to escort Russian vessels. The other THREE are probably in maintenance, or refit.