•Edited 1d ago
Source: K. Clarke via NavyLookout on Twitter (X).
Portland is the second-youngest of the UK’s five remaining Type 23 frigates (behind St Albans), and one of just four remaining active ships (alongside Sutherland and Somerset – Kent is in refit).
Portland is notable for her eight Naval Strike Missile (NSM) launchers. Alongside Somerset, they’re the only ships in the Royal Navy to carry any kind of dedicated anti-ship missile.
This underscores a real weakness in the RN, though not for the immediately obvious reason.
There is a clear absence of ship-launched anti-ship missiles (AShM) in the Royal Navy. Plans had been drawn up to replace the aging Harpoon with the new NSM, sourced from Norway. 11 sets were procured, to be fitted to six destroyers and five frigates. Since then, just three frigates and no destroyers have received the missiles. One of the frigates fitted, Richmond, was then decommissioned shortly thereafter.
This is poor, there’s no bones about it. It is microcosm of British procurement failure. A legacy system, long outdated, forced to continue in service. It’s obsolescence finally unmistakeable, it is retired, well before a suitable replacement can be found. Once that replacement is identified, procurement is glacial.
That said, there is some reason to question the concept of the medium-range anti-ship missile. If I researched correctly, the last case of a warship striking another warship with an AShM whilst both were at sea occurred in 1988.
The much more common method of engaging warships today is through the application of air power, and much less commonly, submarines.
Long-range aircraft like modern fighter jets can carry cruise missiles. Helicopters carry small missiles. Submarines cart around both cruise missiles and torpedoes. All of these platforms have an advantage of the warship; they can come much closer to their target, and escape returning attacks by virtue of their inherent ability to evade targeting.
When considering this, the modern ship-to-ship missile is less important than submarine- or air-launched missiles.
However, the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force remain particularly handicapped in this domain too. RAF Typhoon jets lack an anti-ship missile, and are not slated to receive one until after 2030. The same issue plagues the shared RAF/FAA F-35B Lightning force. Their Spear-3 anti-ship missile is also not expected to see service until the next decade. It also suffers from a reduced range and payload because of its small size.
FAA helicopters are better equipped. British Wildcat helicopters carry both the Martlet air-to-surface missile, ideal for fast attack craft and small attack drones (air and surface), and the Sea Venom, a larger >25km anti-ship missile designed for disabling corvettes. The larger Merlin helicopters carried by the frigate force are not equipped with these missiles. Whilst the FAA are therefore well-positioned to re-enact their triumph in the Battle of Bubiyan during the 1991 Gulf War, these missiles lack the range required to deal with peer surface ships.
Following the withdrawal of the Harpoon in 2023, many amateur commentators attempted to argue that British anti-ship capability was maintained via the force of attack submarines, each equipped with the Spearfish torpedo. On paper, this is a very credible weapon. Fast, long-ranged, and delivered by a virtually undetectable platform, the modern nuclear-powered submarine, Spearfish presents a major threat to all surface combatants (including the oft-touted T23 frigates during exercises).
There’s of course just one issue with this; none of the RN’s six attack submarines are currently operational. Three are alongside in Devonport, two in Faslane, and the last, HMS Agamemnon, remains in Barrow. Not only does this really undermine the UK’s sovereign nuclear deterrent, but it cripples the RN’s ability to actually strike modern peer warships.
As the UK’s only platform for the Tomahawk cruise missile, it also leaves the UK’s deep-strike capability reliant on a depleted stockpile of RAF Storm Shadow cruise missiles, and the aforementioned NSM, which does offer a secondary land-attack function, provided the launching platform strays within 200km of the coastline (eek).
Now, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Firstly, programmes are under way to improve submarine availability. Three new floating drydocks are to be procured (at some indeterminate point in the near or far future), and infrastructure work to support the two submarine maintenance facilities (Faslane and Devonport) are underway.
Secondly, a new dual-purpose anti-ship and land-attack missile is expected to begin trials in 2028 from the Type 26 frigate HMS Glasgow. This is the Stratus LO, one of two missiles that emerged from the Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapons programme (developed with France, with Italy joining later). It is a subsonic, low-observable cruise missile intended to launch from the Typhoon fighter and the Mk41 VLS (thus allowing for the T26, T31 and CCV to be future launch platforms). Current guesses put the range at roughly 1000km; all that has been disclosed by the government is that is can fly ‘significantly’ further than the Storm Shadow (550km).
The other missile from the programme is the Stratus RS. This is a French-led missile. Wargames in the early 2020s led to France favouring speed over stealth with regards to AShMs, and so this missile offers Mach 3 and above top speeds with a shorter range than the LO, all whilst also possessing a secondary air-to-air role for the Rafale. However, currently expectations are that the RN will only procure the Stratus LO.
Ultimately, HMS Portland and her NSM launchers hint at a problem within the RN. The NSM is far from modern navies’ first choice to disable medium-to large surface combatants. Yet for the RN, it is its only option.
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