The sad state of Royal Navy submarine capability—and the implications for Australia
Britain’s Royal Navy has advertised for a suitably experienced individual to fill the role of its director of submarines, a rear admiral who acts as the senior, professional head of its submarine arm. The position is to be filled in April 2024. If this is an early April fool’s joke, the UK Ministry of Defence is part of it.
As the Times newspaper observed on 5 January 2024, the advertisement ‘exposes shameful recruitment gaps’ in senior leadership positions in the RN’s submarine arm.
Under the AUKUS optimum pathway for Australia to transition to nuclear-propelled submarines, it is intended, subject to US congressional and presidential approval, to purchase three to five Virginia-class submarines to fill the capability gap left by the retirement of the six Collins-class boats. This is intended to allow time for a newly designed submarine to be built in partnership with the UK—the so-called AUKUS SSN. The state of the RN and particularly its submarine capability is therefore of more than passing interest.
This position would normally be filled by promoting a suitably qualified candidate from the RN’s senior serving submariners. The apparent lack of suitable candidates prepared to accept promotion to fill the position is extraordinary. Reportedly, internal advertising led to only one applicant, who lacked the pre-requisite submarine command experience. This failure led to the public advertisement.
Under my arguably simplistic interpretation, it would appear that Britain’s senior naval leadership and the government have lost the commitment of their submarine arm.
How did it come to this? See -
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-s ... australia/
