Draft Plan to Slash Royal Navy Surface Fleet

Although no firm plans have yet been announced, The Sun reports that there is a draft plan to shrink by half the number of Royal Navy destroyers and frigates. At the time of the Falklands War in 1982 the Royal Navy fleet included 53 frigates and 13 destroyers. The current fleet contains only 24 of the surface warships.

In a cuts blueprint seen by us, the fleet will be slashed to just 12 frigates and destroyers.

It will make our surface armada, once feared the world over, smaller than that of every other major European nation except Portugal.

And 7,500 sailors will be laid off, more than a fifth of the Senior Service's manpower of 35,760.

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Last night the closest living relative of the Navy's greatest hero, Admiral Lord Nelson, said the plan would have left him "horrified".

And a naval source said: "It won't just be a disaster - we are heading for a national humiliation."

The drastic cuts are being considered because the Treasury has ordered the MoD budget to be slashed by 19 per cent.

Losing 12 frigates and destroyers is the price the Navy will have to pay to keep two new 60,000-ton aircraft carriers. The troop landing ships Albion and Bulwark, which came into service only seven years ago, will also be sold off.

The former First Sea Lord, Lord Alan West, comments on the proposed plan.

"No decisions have been made yet but we need to look at the threats in 2020 and beyond - not just tomorrow," he said. "Our involvement in Afghanistan will end relatively soon. However the UK has 13 dependencies, runs most of the world's shipping from London and over 90 per cent of our trade travels by sea. The world is becoming a more dangerous and unstable place. We will still need a capability for expeditionary warfare. Keeping the two new carriers is a no-brainer. And destroyers and frigates are the backbone of the navy. It takes years to develop capabilities but they can be lost overnight. David Cameron must not do something all of us will live to regret".

By: Shelldrake