06/16/2026
What the Navy needs: Small, cheap and lots
(Editor: Meta deletes posts such as this with a link to telegraph as a news site so the URL has been removed.)
The article's title implies a piece about force development but the author rapidly gets into strategy and seapower.
"As Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher once observed: 'Strategy should govern the types of ship to be designed. Ship design, as dictated by strategy, should govern tactics.'"
"Decide what the Navy is for, ruthlessly prioritise what matters today, accelerate the hybrid layer where it genuinely adds mass, and stop pretending that exquisite platforms alone will keep the sea lanes open."
Are there considerations for Canada in the author's comments?
Comments from an Australian colleague: As usual, Cdr Sharpe RN (ret'd) writes well and states his case succinctly. However, the woes of the Royal Navy (RN) are not those of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). nor, dare I suggest, the Royal Canadian Navy.
Cdt Sharpe and his country have some quite respectable support and assistance in the maritime sphere a long cannon shot from Dover. It would be eating crow, but those Europeans are actually the RN’s future. I’m sure they appreciate the strategic side of the RN’s capability and they clearly admire how the Brits train for war. The problem is that the British Government doesn’t appreciate those things enough to care.
Out here, stuck between three major oceans on a big island a long way from anywhere, things look different. The Russians don’t come here very often (if indeed they ever did; there is some doubt) and our defence concern stems from the intentions of China – both our major and most important trading partner and our biggest existential threat. There is a fair amount of angst about the Yanks in this country from a lot of people who ought to know better, but the fact that we now have a United States Navy (USN) base command in Western Australia and that some of our people are now participating in the upkeep and maintenance of the Virginia Class nuclear-powered submarines (SSN) while others are at sea crewing them, I find a great comfort. Yes, there is some disquiet about the seeming inability of the Brits to keep their submarines at sea and their famous Type 26 frigates – which both our countries are now involved with – take an unconscionable time to build and put into service. But the AUKUS (Australia-United Kingdom-United States) program is seemingly on track (whether we can actually build an SSN in Oz has yet to be demonstrated, of course).
Last week, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (as it still calls itself for the moment) had a Mogami-class frigate in Sydney Harbour – striking stuff! That’s our surface ship future. They can be built and delivered by Mitsubishi in three years. The contract our government signed says that if our chosen yard (which has never built a 6,000 tonne ship before) stuffs up, Mitsubishi will take the production of the remaining eight hulls under its wing. Meanwhile, we are going hard at building autonomous ships (we recently delivered one to the USN!). So, provided the government stays the course the RAN’s future looks a lot brighter than it did. Still, there won’t be enough ships to do the job expected of the RAN and older hulls need to be replaced before long, but we aren’t in the same hole the RN is. Although I’m not a fan, our government recently bought the first mership of a ‘Strategic Fleet’ on which one could build a RAN Fleet Auxiliary Service (if the maritime unions don’t make that an impossibility, as they have done in the past).
Like Cdr Sharpe, I do regret the passing of the RN I knew and served on exchange in, but if the politicians cannot be persuaded to spend the funds required on rebuilding it, it will live on only in our memories.
It is hoped that things are more down the path we are travelling for Canada.
