Second, it is interesting that American Amphibious Ready Groups (ARGs) like the one Duncan is protecting don’t usually have dedicated escort warships of their own. Twenty years ago this would have been unthinkable but there is an increasing trend with US ARGs (and our own LRGs) to operate without accompanying destroyers or frigates. The brochure says this improves “flexibility, rapid response capabilities, and adaptability to evolving maritime threats”. The reality is largely that the US Navy, like ours, doesn’t have enough escort warships to go around. This is unfortunate as the ships of Amphibious Squadron 4 have only close-in, last-ditch air defence weapons. Most of the 24th MEU also offers no capability for fighting at sea – the main exception to this being the six Marine Harriers aboard the Wasp, which can act as effective air defence fighters (though without proper radar direction) or mount anti-ship attacks. The presence of Duncan with her dedicated group air defence Sea Viper missile system makes the ARG enormously safer.
Third is the Houthi-sized elephant in the room. This problem has not gone away at all. The rate of missile and drone attacks has remained steady in the last few weeks but the rate of attacks using Uncrewed Surface Vessels is increasing and given that these weapons hit on the waterline, this is a problem. We’ve also just seen the total abandonment of the Sevastopol naval base by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in response to Ukraine’s devastating use of similar weapons. Back in the Red Sea we also saw two ships attacked off Hudeydah using surface drones. These were less successful than their Ukrainian equivalents, thankfully, but the sooner the USS Theodore Roosevelt can get there and start knocking these things out from the air, the better. She might even arrive today.
Meanwhile, Duncan’s people will be wanting to detach from the US group in the Med and get amongst it in the Red Sea. What Duncan is doing now is excellent and important but 1800 miles south there is a war going on (which we are losing) and the ship’s company will be itching to get stuck in. This isn’t a blood thirst, more that the opportunities to do what you have spent your life training for in a very high-threat environment are rare and you want to take them. Also, and you won’t find this in any official statement, they will be damned if they are going to let their sister ship HMS Diamond hog the bragging rights and be the only ship with kill markings painted on her bridge.
So today, US and UK maritime planners, under political direction, will be doing what they always do; collaboratively looking at the problem and then deciding on the best resources to solve it. The fact that there is an EU-led task group in the same patch of ocean running its own mission remains strategically incoherent and operationally incontinent, but at least when Duncan gets down there the issues this creates will be well known and she will quickly adopt whatever measures Diamond had in place to mitigate them.
That a single ship can provide such a range of options and effects will not be lost on Lord Robertson and his team as they embark on the Strategic Defence Review, announced yesterday. We know what the threats are and what our shortcomings are in terms of people, infrastructure and equipment to deal with them. The excellent team Defence Secretary John Healey has put together (very quickly, I have to say) will have a tough time providing solutions in a way that is both fast and affordable. But strip back all the politics, practicalities and complications and hopefully, HMS Duncan is showing why the answer will still be ‘more ships please’.