Royal Navy assault ships axed amid Government cost-cutting measures

Two former Royal Navy flagships are being decommissioned in cost-saving measures announced by Defence Secretary John Healey.

Assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, which have both been flagships, are being decommissioned alongside a number of other naval vessels - including the HMS Northumberland frigate and a pair of support Wave class tankers. Mr Healey blamed the need to cut costs on the “dire inheritance” left by the Tories but Conservative MP Sir Julian Lewis said the move marked a “black day” for the Marines.

A flagship is a ship that carries the commanding officer of a group of naval vessels and flies a distinguishing flag. The term can also refer to a fleet's lead ship, usually the largest, fastest, most heavily armed or best known.

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The cost-cutting measures will also see the Army’s Watchkeeper drones grounded. They cost around £5 million each and have been in service for a decade but have been beset by problems and are effectively obsolete.

Helicopters will also be affected by the cuts, with the 14 oldest Chinook transport aircraft removed early from service and Puma’s lifespan not being extended beyond March 2025.

Mr Healey acknowledged the cuts came at a time of “war in Europe, growing Russian aggression, conflict in the Middle East and technology changing the nature of warfare” but said that showed the need for “increased resilience and readiness for the future”.

In a statement to MPs, Mr Healey warned that further cuts could be required but insisted he had the support of armed forces chiefs for the decisions he had made.

He said: “For too long our soldiers, sailors, aviators have been stuck with old, outdated equipment because ministers wouldn’t make the difficult decommissioning decisions. As technology advances at pace, we must move faster towards the future. So today, with full backing from our service chiefs, I can confirm that six outdated military capabilities will be taken out of services.

“These decisions are set to save the MoD £150 million over the next two years and up to £500 million over five years, savings that will be retained in full in defence.”

Mr Healey said he was dealing with a “dire inheritance, the state of the finances and the state of the forces often hidden to Parliament, billion pound black holes in defence plans, taxpayers’ funds being wasted, military morale down to record lows”.

The “common sense decisions” announced by the Defence Secretary may not be the last cuts announced. The Government is carrying out a strategic defence review, which will set out the path to spending 2.5% of gross domestic product on defence – although no timetable has yet been set out for that spending commitment.

Mr Healey said: “These will not be the last difficult decisions I will have to make to fix the defence inheritance we were left with, but they will help get a grip of finances now and they will give greater scope to renew our forces for the future as we look towards the strategic defence review and to 2.5%.”

Albion and Bulwark were designed to allow Royal Marines to launch amphibious raids, but they were already effectively mothballed at a cost of £9 million a year.

Sir Julian told MPs in the Commons on Wednesday that the decision to decommission them marked “a black day for the Royal Marines”.

The former defence committee chairman said: “Does (Mr Healey) accept that the purpose of HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, which were due to remain in service for nine and 10 more years, respectively, is to be able to have the capability of making a landing across a foreshore when it is opposed by enemy forces.”

He added: “Does he agree with me that we have no way of knowing whether the absence of that capability for the next decade won’t be an incentive to somebody to try something like the Falklands in the future?”

Mr Healey replied: “Far from being a black day, as he says, this signals a bright future which will be reinforced by the SDR for the Marines and their elite force.

“On HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, he is right. Both ships were not due to go out of service for nine and 10 years respectively, but neither, given the state they’re in, the decisions taken previously by the last government, were set to sail again.

“In other words, they’d, in practice, been taken out of service, but ministers had not been willing to admit this.”

Mr Healey said: “On current planning, neither was due to go to sea again before their planned out-of-service dates of 2033 and 2034.

The other vessels to be scrapped include RFA Wave Knight and Wave Ruler, which will be retired in March and have not been to sea since 2017 and 2022 respectively.

HMS Northumberland will also go out of service in March 2025, as structural damage makes her “uneconomical to repair”.

The Watchkeeper drones will be retired from March, as Mr Healey said technology has advanced at a “rapid rate” since they were introduced in 2010 and the Army will “rapidly switch to a new advanced capability”.

The fourteen oldest Chinooks will be “accelerated” out of service, and modern variants used by the Royal Air Force from 2027, while the Pumas will be replaced by the H-145 from 2026.

Matthew Savill, military sciences director at the Royal United Services Institute defence think tank, said the cuts mainly affected equipment that was approaching retirement and Watchkeeper was “probably obsolete”.

“But the fact that defence either can’t crew them, or is prepared to cut them to make very modest savings over five years in the current international environment, is an indication of just how tight resources must be in the MoD right now,” he added.