Written evidence submitted by Rear Admiral (Rtd) David Snelson and Lieutenant General (Rtd) Sir James Dutton
The Authors. RAdm DG Snelson, Lt Gen Sir James Dutton. Many years of amphibious exercise experience and concept development with the USN/USMC and Falklands Conflict in 1982 (Dutton).
Maritime Component Commander and Comd 3 Cdo Bde RM respectively for Op Telic (Iraq). 3 Cdo Bde employed initially as early entry force alongside US Navy SEALs to seize land based oil infrastructure on right flank of main US Marine Expeditionary Force and to protect flank of Kawr Abdullah waterway mine hunting operations. There were some amphibious aspects to the operation.
Why do we need an Amphibious capability? If we wish to be able to land a sustainable level of force when we cannot guarantee the availability of a seaport and/or airport (even if one exists it may be damaged and become unavailable), we must have the capability to land over beaches. This requires a ship to shore capability, at a minimum consisting of helicopters and flat-bottomed landing craft to transfer troops, combat support and logistic support from deep draught ships to the land. Those ships must also provide a command and control capability for the landing forces until that capability can be established ashore. They can then remain as a sea support base or for re-embarking the force for redeployment elsewhere. Such a capability provides flexibility to deploy and re-deploy in international waters and to operate when there is limited host nation support.
Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone (2000), Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan (2001) and Operation Telic in Iraq (2003) are examples of where significant elements of amphibious forces have been used within the last 20 years. Such capabilities are also usable for Special Forces operations and non-combat operations such as disaster relief e.g. HMS Ocean in the British Virgin Islands September 2017.
Minimum specialist capabilities for a credible amphibious force:
- Landing Platform Dock (LPD) or Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD). These types of ships provide a semi-submersible facility with a dock that can launch large flat-bottomed landing craft (or air cushion vehicles), carry and launch helicopters and provide the command and control facility. They will also carry troops – at overload in significant numbers. Most nations have chosen to combine these functions in one ship (based on the US Wasp class LHD) as the most cost-effective solution. HMSs Albion and Bulwark fall into this category, although they can only operate helicopters. The Wasp class LHD has a full length flight deck which can also operate short take-off and landing fixed wing aircraft eg F35B. Pictured below are HMS Bulwark showing the dock entrance and HMAS Adelaide an Australian LHD similar to the Wasp class.
- Landing Platform Helicopter (LPH). This type of ship can support a helicopter fleet, on and below the flight deck, carry combat troops and (when suitably fitted) a command capability. The Invincible class eventually provided that capability when retrofitted throughout their lives; the new Queen Elizabeth class carriers do not. HMS Ocean, the UK’s current LPH, will be withdrawn from service in 2018.
Pictured below is HMS OCEAN; NB the stern ramp folded up but used for unloading vehicles
- Support shipping. To carry troops and stores. This capability used to be provided by the Landing Ship Logistic (LSL) class and now by the Landing Ship Dock (LSD), together with MOD owned ro-ro ships and chartered merchant shipping. Although the Bay class LSD has a dock, it has space for only one landing craft and so requires the 4 from the LPDs to unload heavy equipment in any sensible timescale.
Pictured below is Royal Fleet Auxiliary of the Bay Class unloading via a Mexeflote; a flat motorised pontoon which can be used in benign sea conditions to unload considerable amounts of vehicles and stores.
Sealift and sea basing. Many studies have shown that only sealift can enable a significant force to be deployed to and sustained in an overseas theatre. Air support can supplement and deploy small forces early but it can never replace sealift. OP Telic required over 60 merchant ships to transport UK forces equipment to the Gulf. This was in addition to the 3 Cdo Bde equipment in amphibious shipping. While there was also a very significant airlift effort, this was limited, not by aircraft availability, but by landing slots at airfields in the region. (See HCDC report 200304.) Amphibious shipping can unload when ports are unavailable or damaged. This capability can be valuable even when host nation ports are available; e.g. on beaches in Kuwait whose ports were overloaded during the build-up to Op Telic. It is also of note that the majority of commercial Ro Ro ferries cannot carry heavy armour such as tanks. Only specialist amphibious ships and MoD owned Ro-Ro vessels provide this capability. Sea basing was also used to a significant degree in the initial operations post 9/11 to suppress the Taliban in Afghanistan. All the initial forces were landed from aircraft carriers including HMS Illustrious in LPH mode.
Op Telic Amphibious capability. The specialist amphibious shipping for Op Telic was 2 x LPH (HMS’s Ocean and Ark Royal); 5 x LSLs & other RFAs carrying stores, ammunition and fuel together with capabilities such as the Primary Casualty Receiving Ship. Much of the logistic support to sustain 3 Cdo Bde (held on ships) had to be distributed to 7 Armd Bde and 16 Bde because of ready availability – the ‘just enough just in time’ concept to provide for such an eventuality for these Brigades proved ‘just too late’. The UK Joint Commander’s decision to commit the full 3 Cdo Bde capability was driven as much by its logistic flexibility as its combat power.
TELIC was not a ‘classic’ amphibious operation because we had Kuwait as a friendly land base within reach of the target and the time to make use of it. It made sense to land the Brigade and launch from land – but we should not conclude that could always happen again. Even with that land base, we retained one company as a reserve at sea and used Naval Gunfire Support, (NGS) because our land based artillery could not reach the base of the Al Faw Peninsula. So, risks were taken and constraints accepted given the lack of LPDs – but offset by use of land base and by other shipping. This set of geographic circumstances cannot, of course, be relied upon for future operations and thus LPDs form a critical element of amphibious capability.
Capability of new Carriers. The QE class are likely to make a very good helicopter base. But they will have very limited heavy equipment move capability and limited capacity for troops, weapons and ammunition. They will have good strategic C2 but no built-in capability for amphibious operations, which require around 25 communications circuits – we would again be reduced to vehicles on deck with whip antennas, as in the early days of the Invincible class CVS. The ships are big and deep draught for inshore work and there would rightly be an unwillingness to risk a national strategic asset for this purpose.
Amphibious forces as a ‘force in being’. It is worth emphasising the utility of an amphibious force whether or not it is used. Such a force can poise offshore with deliberately undeclared intentions and fix enemy forces. The best known recent example of this was the first Gulf War where the 4th US Marine Expeditionary Brigade poised at sea in the northern Gulf and tied down a large portion of Iraqi forces.
Resurgent Russia. Neither of us are competent to comment on the current threat from a Resurgent Russia, beyond open source reporting. We would nevertheless wish to remind the Committee of the Cold War NATO northern flank commitment: the need to seize north Norwegian airfields for use by NATO forces to counter the Russian Northern Fleet and dominate the sea-lanes into the North Atlantic. The ability to undertake that task still requires a rapidly deployable amphibious force.
Our European Allies see us as leaders in amphibious issues – alongside the Netherlands Navy and Marine Corps of course. We drove the establishment of the European Amphibious Capability in 2000. We cannot lead if we do not have a credible capability ourselves.
The United States has often valued the contribution of amphibious forces over Carrier forces from the UK given the US carrier capability. In the experience of the authors the US coalition commander in Op Telic unhesitatingly chose amphibious over carrier capability from the UK when given a choice.
Flexibility of amphibious forces. It is important to separate the utility of an amphibious capability from a Media-driven perception of ‘storming beaches’. For decades UK amphibious doctrine has been based on a ‘potentially hostile’ shore as the worst case. Even the US lacks the capacity for WW2 Pacific Islands type operations without dramatically high casualties. Good intelligence is key to this: in 2003 we did indeed land by helicopter direct on enemy held oil facilities, but this was a carefully calculated risk based on complete tactical surprise and a detailed knowledge of the enemy disposition – in real time with Predator overhead. We also benefitted from immense fire support: six batteries of artillery, four NGS ships, AC-130 gunships and fixed and rotary wing fire support at immediate call. But that was an exception: a better example was the decision to land offset in San Carlos Water in 1982 where the Argentinian forces did not expect us. That was not risk free, no act of war can be. A significant risk in San Carlos was mines and we had no minesweepers: we mitigated that risk by using the smaller landing craft in the initial wave. Some were calling for a direct assault onto Port Stanley where no doubt the cost would have been higher. The point is that an amphibious force has the flexibility to make use of intelligence to land in different places.
Summary. An amphibious capability consists of a number of interdependent elements; specialist troops, specialist shipping and specialist equipment. A meaningful national capability requires sufficient elements of all three to be workable and give the nation options in times of conflict. The planned scrapping of the LPH and potential scrapping of one or both LPDs would leave the country without an effective amphibious capability whatever specialist Royal Marine troop number remained. The option to potentially remove the shipping from the national orbat appears to be a ‘bottom up’ savings measure option instead of a ‘top down’ National Security Council re-assessment of defence needs. The authors believe that the Defence Select Committee should urge the Government to reassess defence needs before a resource driving savings measure effectively removes a national capability.
11 December 2017