The Telegraph: London is now permanently covered by Russian naval guns

Britain does not have enough warships. This is old news, but we are reminded of it at frequent intervals by the Russians. In particular, we are reminded because they have taken to keeping a warship of theirs permanently on station off our southern and eastern coasts, The Telegraph notes.

The frigate Neustrashimy is Moscow’s current Channel guardship. She relieved the Admiral Grigorovich in mid-July and has settled into her predecessor’s routine, loitering and waiting for the next sanctioned shadow-fleet tanker which she will escort past our shores.

I have written about the Neustrashimy before, on the occasion of her unannounced 100mm gunnery exercise 40 miles south of Plymouth – in the busiest shipping lane in the world, firing shells capable of ricocheting ten miles beyond the target. The Defence Secretary called it “performative and irresponsible”, but it was also a signal.

For weapons, Neustrashimy – in addition to her 100mm main gun – has capable anti-air missiles and guns plus various anti-submarine weapons. Most Russian frigates can also carry capable cruise missiles such as the land-attack Kalibr, which could strike anywhere in Britain if fired from the Channel.

As it happens the Neutrashimy is a rare exception and has no tubes capable of launching Kalibrs, but when she is replaced in due course by a Grigorovich-class, Gepard-class or Gorshkov-class vessel the whole of Britain will be under Russia’s guns again, as we were up until mid-July and have been for quite some time.

People who think a Russian attack on Nato would be “over there” – in the Baltics or Poland, perhaps – well, they should think again. Putin might start with a sheaf of Kalibrs fired at London: a city with no air defences.

So what are we doing about it? The Fleet Ready Escort (FRE) – the on-duty frigate or destroyer we’d expect to use for shadowing Russian warships – can only be in one place at once. HMS Somerset recently logged 25 days of shadowing in May alone, escorting various kinds of Russian vessels. Of the handful of frigates we have left, around four (at a push) are useable and you need three ships to keep one on task. So we can just about sustain the FRE task if we have nothing else to do.

Unfortunately there are also Russian submarines to think about: they are also a perennial threat, prowling about over our undersea infrastructure and trying to find our nuclear deterrent submarine. So we also need frigates to act as the Towed Array Patrol Ship (TAPS), hunting subs. Apart from frigates, we have just two destroyers fit for sea and one is in the Gulf of Oman doing destroyer stuff (area air defence).

To use the modern vernacular, the maths aren’t mathing. Just by way of a cherry on top, only three of our warships currently have any anti-ship missiles. The rest are comprehensively outgunned by their Russian equivalents.

And indeed it gets worse. Due to our lack of frigates and destroyers, the mission of shadowing and monitoring Russian ships off our coasts often falls to the Batch 1 River-class patrol ships (retiring in 2028), minehunters, or Royal Fleet Auxiliaries (of which we have four that we can operate). All of these are armed with nothing more than light guns and would be blown out of the water unanswerably if it came to fighting.

In terms of messaging, deterrence and intelligence gathering, this doesn’t cut it. We could just leave the Russians alone to do what they like, and some people think we should. We would certainly have to if the Royal Navy were ever tasked to intercept migrants, as Reform recently suggested. You can see why the RN winces a little whenever politicians lob the small boats grenade at them.

In sum, a new permanent warship patrol has materialised off our coast and it’s not one of ours.

Photo: Royal Navy

Multiple defence planners have revealed that they are concerned about potential Russian ‘hijackings’ of British ships in the Indo-Pacific.

It comes after earlier this week, when Vladimir Putin urged his Navy to ‘detain’ any European ships as payback for Europe’s initiative to crack down on Russia’s shadow fleet.

In July, Keir Starmer announced that a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker was intercepted in the English Channel.

The SMYRTOS vessel has been anchored off the English south coast and monitored since the seizure.

But former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West, told the Telegraph: ‘Our Navy has been reduced and reduced and reduced and we do not have enough ships to fulfil our role to look after global shipping.

‘It’s extraordinary that successive governments have allowed us to reduce our Navy in such a way. The patrol ships are there to show a presence. But going back 30 years ago, there were four or five ships that would be steaming around here, not just two.’

Sir Ben Wallace, former Conservative defence secretary, told the Telegraph: ‘The first response to Putin’s comments should be to work with allies such as France to ensure we burden-share across the globe, escort or protection duties.’

As tensions at sea flare, the UK government has continued to defend seizing the Russian tanker last month despite fears it could spark wider issues for British ships.

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