SEOUL, South Korea — On the fringes of the U.S.-Iran war, a lone British destroyer arrived off the coast of Cyprus this week to help defend the drone-struck, strategic island in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The belated arrival of HMS Dragon, which will join a European task group, is unlikely to reassure a British public appalled by the realization that their famed Royal Navy no longer rules the waves and appears unable to even put ships to sea.
The lack of naval capability holds worrisome ramifications for Britain’s potential role in a multinational naval coalition to open the Strait of Hormuz, the strategically vital Persian Gulf waterway that Iran has effectively blockaded since the U.S and Israel launched attacks on the Islamic republic nearly a month ago.
Britain’s inability or unwillingness to directly assist that mission could add to the derision sometimes shown by President Trump toward his British counterpart, Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The decline of the British Royal Navy, analysts say, has its roots in the post-Cold War peace dividend, when London cut back on its military spending. That reduction was then compounded by missteps from Britain’s government and its bureaucratic establishment, both of which have been famously lampooned in comedies like “Yes, Minister” and “Monty Python.”
Royal Navy humiliation
A March 1 drone attack likely launched by Lebanon-based Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy group, struck Britain’s air base at Akrotiri, Cyprus.
Damage was minimal and no casualties were reported, but the strike still had a profound effect. It terrified local civilians and infuriated the Cypriot government, which has since questioned the British military presence on the island.
Critics blasted London for failing to pre-deploy a warship to the waters off Cyprus, where its sensors and weaponry could provide forward defense and possibly prevent such a drone attack.
A headline in the Evening Standard newspaper asked: “Where’s Britain? Government slammed as Italy, Spain, France and Netherlands send ships to protect Cyprus.”
The Independent newspaper lamented, “We should have seen this coming.”
While the Royal Air Force deployed F-35B and Typhoon fighters in defensive missions over Cyprus and the Gulf, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Turkish warships steamed for Cyprus. France massed 11 vessels, including a nuclear aircraft carrier rerouted from the Baltic.
Not so for the Royal Navy. It swiftly became clear that Britain’s combat fleet — with the exception of two submarines — was in dry dock, undergoing refit, or otherwise unable to immediately set sail.
“The Royal Navy fleet looks like a construction site: All of the major classes of warships and support ships, without exception, are in various states of retirement, repair, construction, training, or crew regeneration,” read a piece by the Center for European Policy Analysis, entitled “The Royal Navy: On Course for National Embarrassment.”
“Some relatively new ships are tied up alongside but uncrewed as they await sufficient trained manpower and funding to be used operationally,” it said.
Prominent politicians also took aim.
“What has happened to the Royal Navy?” asked conservative icon and former MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
“In 1970, we had 320 ships. In 2000, that had gone down to 99. By 2024, it had gone down to 63,” he said in a video posted on social media.
Britain’s naval heritage is proud. Famed sea warriors such as Sir Francis Drake and Admiral Horatio Nelson dominated the age of sail. In both World War I and World War II, the Royal Navy proved highly effective around the world.
In 1982, long after the end of World War II, the Royal Navy recaptured the Falkland Islands, 8,000 miles from home.
In 1991, at the Battle of Bubiyan, it annihilated Iraq’s Navy, shot down an Iraqi missile aimed at the American battleship USS Missouri, and cleared Iraqi sea mines in the Persian Gulf.
Those capabilities have eroded significantly.
After the drone attack on Cyprus, just one warship — HMS Dragon — was available. The vessel took 10 days to cast off, then weeks to arrive.
Although a ballistic missile submarine was believed to be on patrol, only one other British warship was operational at the time. That vessel, HMS Astute, a nuclear-attack submarine, was rerouted to the combat zone from Australia.
Top-heavy, under-armed, under-gunned
Britain’s Ministry of Defense employs 50,000 bureaucrats and its navy boasts 20,000 personnel. London has the world’s fifth-largest defense budget, yet its fleet is tiny, top heavy, under-hulled and under-gunned.
It fields multiple small patrol and fishery protection vessels, but its blue-ocean combat force is hardly formidable. That force comprises nine nuclear submarines, two aircraft carriers and a surface escort flotilla of 13 frigates and destroyers.
Escorts are the workhorses of any fleet. Other middle-power navies do better: France deploys 16, Italy 17, South Korea 32, and Japan 49.
The two carriers — each of which cost $4.7 billion — were recently on months-long deployments to Australia, India, Japan and Singapore. But they suffer in-built weaknesses.
Their air wings comprise F-35Bs, which have shorter combat radiuses of about 450 nautical miles than the U.S. Navy’s F-35Cs, which have radiuses of about 600 nautical miles. British carriers, then, must sail closer to their enemies than U.S. carriers.
F-35Bs carry lighter weapon loads than F-35Cs. Britain’s F-35Bs will not get top-tier air-to-surface missiles before 2030.
The carriers lack defensive missile systems mounted on U.S. carriers, so they rely heavily on escorts. During their recent deployments to the Indo-Pacific, their escort groups necessarily included allied vessels.
Britain’s escorts also feature substandard weaponry.
The Royal Navy fields no cruisers and its most advanced air-defense destroyers’ missiles, unlike the U.S. Aegis, are of questionable utility against ballistic missiles, such as those possessed by Iran.
British destroyers mount just 48 missile cells, compared to U.S. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers’ 90 or 96, or the 112 on Chinese Type 055 destroyers.
Those factors may explain why there are no plans to deploy either British carrier to the current Iran conflict.
What went wrong?
The Royal Navy was hard hit by the end of the Cold War and subsequent low-intensity “wars of choice” in Afghanisan, Iraq and Sierra Leonne.
“With the peace dividend and ’The End of History,’ the 2003 Defense White Paper was all about how we can choose what wars will happen,” said naval academic Alexander Clarke. “The hubris was absurd.”
That led to slashing warship orders and downgrading firepower. Moreover, the defense establishment has struggled with procurement.
“The U.K. is prone to indecision, we debate forever what to order, when it is better to get a not-quite-perfect ship, but you can send it,” said Mr. Clarke, who runs the Naval History Live channel on YouTube. “We spend a lot of money but in 29 years, have had eight prime ministers but 14 defense secretaries, and a new one has to review everything.”
The docking of the force in various states of disrepair has shocked observers. Flagship carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth has been non-operational for over a year.
If front-line capacity is badly eroded, so is maintenance.
“All the dry docks are in refits, they have not had refits for a good 30 years, as all governments have said the next government should do it,” Mr. Clarke said. “For the last 10 years we have been operating with just one dry dock for the sub fleet.”
Warehouses and spare parts have been slashed, resulting in destroyer HMS Daring — laid up for nine years — being cannibalized:
“They keep robbing parts off her to fix other ships,” Mr. Clarke said.
The Royal Navy is developing unmanned vessels and aims for a hybrid fleet. It deploys minesweeping drones that may be useful in the Strait of Hormuz. But there are reasons for pessimism.
Some 23% of working-age Britons take benefits, making welfare expenses colossal. At $405 billion in financial year 2024-2025, it dwarfed the defense budget for the same period, $80.5 billion.
“This is going to get worse before it gets better,” ex-Royal Navy officer Tom Sharpe told Times Online. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel because we are building ships, but the Defense Investment Plan is not signed off by the Treasury.”
That refers to investments demanded by last year’s Strategic Defense Review. With defense outlays being delayed by the Labour government, projects face indefinite holdups.
Should the Royal Navy, then, align capabilities to mission by downsizing to littoral defense?
“We can’t afford to: Every paper in the House of Commons speaks of sea lines of communications for our energy and food imports, and London’s economy is dependent on maritime insurance,” Mr. Clarke said. “Britain has potential to grow back, but one of the issues we face is we have lost our identity, things that made us understand who and what we are.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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