The Royal Navy (RN) is sinking below the waves literally and figuratively every year. At the outbreak of war in Iran, the UK could not get a single ship ready to send to the gulf region.
It is time to turn off the lease to their nuclear Trident missiles on the Vanguard SSBN fleet, they are no longer reliable nor capable. While the US is at it, toss the Five Eyes (FVEY) relationship into the rubbish bin too.
Commander Salamander adroitly weighs in:
The Royal Navy’s relative collapse is shocking. Since the mid-1980s, the US Navy’s submarine force has shrunk to 59% of its 1985 level. The Royal Navy’s submarine force has shrunk to 31% of its 1985 level. Today, the Royal Navy should have at least five more submarines in service if they paced the US Navy’s post-Cold War drawdown.
Back to the Perisher course. Here’s the BBC documentary on it from 1985. There were enough people in the course to have a proper dinner.
Now?
Sad.
The legendary “Perisher” course was one of the toughest submarine commander courses in the world. One outcome of the course was to give the individual newly qualified CO the confidence that he could hack it. He had been tested in fire and come through. The other, perhaps less obvious, was the impact on the crew. Every submariner knew how testing the Perisher course was; if their new Captain had completed the course successfully then it gave the crew confidence that they would be safe in his hands and could concentrate on their task and role.
The documentary below aired in 1985 when the British Bolshevik Corporation still had a reputation for quality..
The continuous nuclear submarine deterrent consumes roughly half of all naval/equipment procurement, leaving conventional surface combatants exposed to continuous batch cuts and delivery delays.
