THE Royal Navy’s ability to maintain high readiness for operations is being degraded through lack of funds, the National Audit Office said yesterday.

Under a series of defence cuts, the Navy’s fleet of destroyers and frigates is being reduced to 25. In a report on the Armed Forces’ ability to be ready for action, the Government’s financial watchdog said that the readiness of the fleet began to decline three years ago.

The National Audit Office (NAO) predicted that the Navy’s readiness status would keep falling, recovering only “in a best case” from 2006-07, but in a worst case not until after 2010. In the worst case only 50 per cent of the fleet would be ready for operations by 2009.

The watchdog said that across the three Services more than a third would struggle to deploy within the time set by military planners.

The NAO said that 38 per cent of the Armed Forces had “serious weaknesses” in their readiness levels and 2 per cent were described as “critical”. The Ministry of Defence had decided to run down the readiness of the Navy in order to concentrate on bringing the Army and RAF up to the required state.

To reduce the risk of the Navy being unable to provide a balanced set of capabilities for an operation, the MoD had introduced a system under which all “non-essential activity was removed from the Royal Navy’s programme”. Ships that were not needed for operations were being put on “reduced support status”. Any of these ships suffering defects would be repaired only if there were problems affecting health and safety or environmental safety.

The aim was to preserve a core capability to deploy a medium-scale task group for an operation. That would normally be about half a dozen warships, including an aircraft carrier and an amphibious ship, ready to sail within 20 or 30 days: the required period for a high-readiness status.

The NAO said, however, that although the MoD planned to start returning to normal funding for the Navy from next year, it was anticipated “that the material state of the fleet will degrade, along with its ability to undertake high-readiness tasks over a longer period”.

The RAF had also been affected by the cuts, with flying hours for fast-jet pilots reduced from 17.5 to 16.5 hours a month for the next year. Although the MoD said that the risks involved were acceptable, the NAO gave a warning that it could affect the air crews’ “high-end war-fighting” skills and, over time, lead to a dilution in skills and experience.

The NAO’s report also highlighted, with some misgivings, the MoD’s policy, particularly prevalent in the Army, of “redistributing people and equipment to bring force elements up to sufficient strength to deploy on operations”.

This cannibalisation system was often inefficient and reduced the MoD’s ability to generate forces quickly for larger-scale campaigns, it said.

Michael Ancram, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said: “This Government is effectively sending our Forces to war with one arm tied behind their back. The risks that the MoD have been taking are utterly unacceptable and entirely driven by the Treasury’s ambition to save funds by depleting the capability and the readiness of our Armed Forces.

“This is a reckless and highly dangerous practice and the Government now has some serious questions to answer regarding why more than one third of our Armed Forces are not meeting readiness targets.”

SIZE OF FLEET

2005-06 3 carriers, 25 destroyers/frigates, 10 tactical subs, 4 ballistic missile subs

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth