iscover
Despite the recent success of Operation Highmast in 2025, all is not well with the Royal Navy, as events in the Middle East reveal that the once indefatigable Royal Navy is but a hollowed out husk of its former glory, with major lessons for Australia’s own Navy.
From relatively modest roots in 1546 to becoming the world’s most powerful navy responsible for the unilateral ending of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and security of history’s greatest empire, the British Royal Navy has a long, proud and storied history.
However, in recent decades, it, like many Western counterparts, has fallen prey to the same challenges: the destructive budget sequestration in the aftermath of the Cold War, cost overruns, delivery delays for an increasingly small number of boutique but temperamental platforms and, of course, declining recruitment figures.
In the immediate years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, these factors bore little in the way of negative fruit as the world was, for a time, largely a benevolent, stable and principally American-dominated geopolitical zoo.
Fast forward to today and the world is vastly different, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, with the re-emergence of an assertive, ambitious and militaristic Russia beginning in the mid-2000s and then ramping up with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, have run headlong into the decades-long ambition of successive Israeli leaders to decapitate the Iranian regime.
The outbreak of war in the Middle East and Iran’s surprising resilience, willingness and capacity to fight back has also served to shed a rather unflattering light on the capability of some of America’s closest allies, particularly those across the Europe, with the United Kingdom front and centre of the American “firing squad”.
Indeed, President Donald Trump, not known for his measured commentary, said over the weekend of the increasingly besieged British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer: “The United Kingdom, our once great ally, maybe the greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East. That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer – but we will remember. We don’t need people that join wars after we’ve already won!”
In response, the British government has received mounting pressure to deploy British military assets to the Middle East, not only to expand the defensive capabilities of Royal Air Force Akrotiri in Crete, which has recently come under direct drone attack, but to also provide further strategic capabilities in support of American and Israeli efforts against Iran.
However, the pressure is rapidly making contact with inescapable gravity of reality that is serving to shed light on the precariously hollow state of the British Armed Forces, and the Royal Navy in particular, which has been, in essence, left a shattered husk of a force in desperate need for some love and attention.
An embarrassing state of affairs
Front and centre of the miserable state of affairs facing the Royal Navy is the longstanding rapid deployability of the fleet’s Type 45 or Daring Class destroyers, with questions abound for the two Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers and, of course, the fleet’s nuclear-powered submarine capability which will continue to face major tactical and strategic challenges in an era of increasingly complex geopolitics.
In light of this, Prime Minister Starmer and the Labor government are facing increasing pressure to address the issues facing the British Armed Forces and the Royal Navy in particular, with a growing chorus of experts, pundits and commentators raising the alarm for this embarrassing state of affairs. In particular, we have Peter Suciu writing for the National Interest, Larisa Brown writing for The Times and Pete Sandeman from Navy Lookout, each of which unpack these embarrassing circumstances.
Beginning with the analysis provided by Peet Sandeman, who articulated that while the Royal Navy continues to operate globally, supports NATO commitment and continues to maintain a nuclear deterrent (whether that is actually sovereign is a different question): “The RN is caught in a perfect storm of underfunding and the impacts of poor decisions made in the past. The Navy is not just hollowed out but is now actually incapable of performing many of the routine tasks it was managing until quite recently.”
However, these issues didn’t just spring up overnight, rather they are the result of three decades of sustained budget cuts, a policy failure to pivot post-Cold War and, for that matter, respond to the very real threat posed by Russia (observed since the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008) and the increasing antagonism and capabilities of China, both of which pose an ever-increasing (at least to varying degrees) threat to the United Kingdom and its maritime interests.
Sandeman articulated this saying, “The present situation did not emerge overnight. It is the cumulative result of three decades of shrinking force structure, repeated delays to shipbuilding programs and a strategic assumption that a large-scale maritime clash was unlikely or the delusion that major conflict was always ‘10 years away’.”
Building on this, Peter Suciu added: “While the US Navy struggles to respond to multiple crises, the UK’s Royal Navy may not even be ready to deal with a single crisis. Known for centuries as the ‘Senior Service,’ the fighting force more closely resembles an elderly pensioner whose best days have long since passed than a fit and ready warfighter ready to address modern threats.”
While this comparison to the United States is unhelpful, given the difference in scale, scope and focus points for the Royal Navy and the US Navy, it is important, with Navy Lookout’s Sandeman saying, “During the Cold War, the RN maintained far larger surface forces. Twelve Type 42 destroyers were eventually replaced by just six Type 45 destroyers; the decision to build half of the planned 12 can be traced to the costs of the war in Iraq ... The latest crisis has hit at a particularly low point for the RN. Thirteen frigates are in the shipbuilding pipeline, but the 30-year-old Type 23s are falling apart, well before replacements are ready. The ‘frigate gap’ will leave the escort fleet under severe pressure for the rest of the decade.”
Rubbing further salt in the wound, The Times’ Larisa Brown detailed: “In 2014 the Royal Navy had 65 ships in its fleet, including 13 frigates, six destroyers and four amphibious assault vessels. It also had 11 submarines.
“Now it has 51 warships and 10 submarines, many of which have been stuck in port for years. Both the Navy’s former amphibious assault ships have been scrapped, as well as five frigates, two minehunters, and one attack submarine in the past three years.”
This collapse in the total number of ships, marks a fall of almost 40 per cent since 2000, with former head of the Royal Navy Lord West telling Brown: “We have steadily sliced away and we have ended up with a navy that isn’t able to do what is expected of it.”
But this is just part of the problem.
A serious lack of strategy
Much like Australia’s own glaring lack of true national strategy, let alone our serious lack of cohesive maritime and naval security strategy, the Royal Navy’s precarious and embarrassing position stems largely from its lack of strategy, particularly in the post-Cold War era.
Sandeman detailed this, saying, “Britain now has a political class whose instincts in an international crisis are to consult the lawyers before consulting military leaders or strategic thinkers. The world appears to be drifting back towards a system dominated by a handful of ‘strongman’ leaders pursuing their interests above all and seeking to revive an 18th-century style order built around competing spheres of influence.”
In the British context, Sandeman detailed the impact of the lack of strategy on how the British government enforces the post-Second World War economic, political and strategic order and how it is directly impacting the size of the contemporary Royal Navy, saying, “As naval assets have become fewer in number (and typically more expensive), British leaders have become more reluctant to take risks with their deployment. This caution can feed a cycle in which fewer ships lead to greater hesitation about using them.”
If this sounds familiar to you as an Australian, don’t worry, you’re not alone. It is very clear that Australia is increasingly taking lessons from the mother country and we will be found wanting.
Final thoughts
Australia must urgently wake-up to the strategic reality unfolding around us. If we fail to act now, we will be leaving a far more dangerous and uncertain world to our children and grandchildren.
This moment demands a fundamental rethink about who we are as a nation, how we see ourselves, and how we intend to secure our place in a rapidly changing region. For decades, much of the Western world assumed that the end of the Cold War delivered a lasting “peace dividend”, a belief that defence spending could shrink while prosperity and stability expanded.
That assumption is now proving dangerously wrong.
Across the Indo-Pacific, the strategic environment is becoming more contested and more competitive by the year. Powers including China, India and Pakistan are expanding their military capabilities and projecting influence well beyond their borders. At the same time, countries such as Japan and South Korea are stepping back into more prominent regional security roles, while south-east Asian nations including Thailand and Vietnam are strengthening their own strategic weight.
This competition is not a distant possibility on the horizon. It is already underway, and it will define the coming decades.
Australia cannot afford to repeat the mistakes made by much of Europe and the United Kingdom, where decades of underinvestment and strategic complacency hollowed out defence capability under the illusion that major conflict had become unlikely. Rebuilding that lost capacity is now proving enormously expensive and painfully slow.
If Australia wants to preserve its sovereignty, prosperity and freedom of action, we must instead build a defence force and national industrial base that is robust, survivable and resilient. That means sustained long-term investment in military capability, sovereign defence industry, hardened infrastructure and national resilience, not short bursts of spending when crises emerge.
Without that commitment, Australia will not simply fall behind. We will be overtaken by the accelerating economic and military power of our neighbours. If we fail to prepare, the next generation may inherit a country overshadowed by wealthier, more powerful and more influential states.
For too long, governments of all stripes have relied on incremental adjustments and short-term fixes. But the strategic landscape is moving too quickly for that approach to continue. What Australia now needs is a clear, ambitious national strategy, one that mobilises government, industry and the public around a shared vision of security, strength and long-term national resilience.
The question is no longer whether the Indo-Pacific will become the central arena of global competition. It already is. The real question is whether Australia chooses to shape the future of our region, or whether we allow it to be shaped without us.
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch at
Stephen Kuper
Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.
