![HMS Westminster, recently refurbished at huge expense to the taxpayer, and HMS Argyll will be decommissioned this year](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/01/04/TELEMMGLPICT000300837087_17044007425130_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqfTlWJUdQyqCwQ8EZ5mqjumJyrDPqNWNvB3ZGGAGBFp8.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Navy has so few sailors it has to decommission ships
New frigates unable to be manned unless two existing warships are taken out of service
![HMS Westminster, recently refurbished at huge expense to the taxpayer, and HMS Argyll will be decommissioned this year](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/01/04/TELEMMGLPICT000300837087_17044007425130_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqfTlWJUdQyqCwQ8EZ5mqjumJyrDPqNWNvB3ZGGAGBFp8.jpeg?imwidth=680)
The Royal Navy has so few sailors that it has to decommission two warships to staff its new class of frigates, The Telegraph can reveal.
HMS Westminster, which was recently refurbished at huge expense to the taxpayer, and HMS Argyll will be decommissioned this year.
The crews will be sent to work across the new fleet of Type 26 frigates as they come into service.
It comes as the Armed Forces experience a significant recruitment crisis, with the Navy having suffered a collapse in the flow of new recruits into the service.
A defence source told The Telegraph: “We will have to take manpower from one area of the Navy in order to put into a new area of the force.”
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has ordered eight Type 26 frigates, which will be the Navy’s most advanced submarine-hunting warships to date.
However, HMS Glasgow, the first of the new Type 26s, will not be operational until 2028 at the earliest, followed by HMS Cardiff, expected by the end of the decade.
The move will bring the number of frigates in Britain’s surface fleet down to just nine until the two new ships arrive.
The MoD has ordered six more Type 26 frigates, but they are not expected to start arriving until the 2030s.
It comes as Britain considers military action against Houthi rebels over their attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea.
One option being considered is moving HMS Lancaster, a Type 23 frigate, to support HMS Diamond in the Red Sea as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian to safeguard shipping.
Critics have suggested Britain would have more capacity to protect cargo in the Red Sea if frigate numbers were not being reduced.
A Whitehall source justified the move and said the decision allowed the military to focus on “updating the Navy into a modern, hi-tech fighting force”.
The source said: “It is always emotive when ships that have a long history of service come to the end of their working life. They and the sailors who crewed them have done the country proud. But decommissioning them is the right decision. The new Type 26 frigates will be in service before those ships can be refitted.”
In the 12 months to March, MoD figures showed that the Navy, which has 29,000 full-time recruits, performed the worst out of the three services for recruitment.
Intake for the Navy and Royal Marines dropped 22.1 per cent compared with the previous year, while the RAF dropped by almost 17 per cent and the Army by nearly 15 per cent. Although the Government is planning to reduce the size of the Armed Forces, recruitment figures are still far below target.
Lord West, the former first sea lord, questioned why the Navy was decommissioning warships without having a new fleet ready to take over and warned that the UK’s warships were “dropping like flies”.
“We are losing operational ships – which is all very well as long as there’s no war in the next few years,” he said.
Lord West cited the 1982 Falklands War, in which the UK lost two destroyers and two frigates, and a further 12 were damaged, as an example of needing a larger surface fleet.
“With the number we’ve got, if we get involved in any action we are really poorly placed,” he warned. “If the Government had taken seriously the issue of frigate numbers over the last 10 years, there would be sufficient to meet the requirements of trade protection in the Red Sea.”
HMS Westminster, which featured in the James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, is described on the Navy’s website as having “recently returned to service after one of the longest, most comprehensive and complex revamps in her lifetime” following a 2017 refurbishment, and was set to undergo another £100 million refit.
Around the same time, HMS Argyll, the longest serving Type 23 frigate in the Navy, underwent a multi-million pound refit to return her to the front line.
After being decommissioned, the ships will either be scrapped or sold to an ally.
Last year, James Cartlidge, the defence procurement minister, insisted that HMS Westminster was “part of a modernisation programme being implemented to all Type 23s that are in upkeep”, when asked in Parliament if there were plans to scrap it.
John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, accused the Government of failing to get a grip on problems within the MoD, saying: “That the Royal Navy is forced by a lack of sailors to mothball ships shortly after refits that cost millions of taxpayers’ money is further evidence of ministers failing to get to grips with deep problems in defence.
“MoD mismanagement has wasted at least £15 billion of public money since 2010, and satisfaction with service life has plunged to new lows.”
Tobias Ellwood, a former chairman of the defence select committee, said it was “baffling” to decommission two frigates at a time where the UK’s surface fleet was “massively overstretched”.
“During the Gulf War the Royal Navy boasted 51 frigates and destroyers,” Mr Ellwood said. “That number will soon fall to just 16. Yet our world is more dangerous than any time since 1945.
“The strength of today’s Royal Navy is simply inadequate to handle the ever-complex threat picture that is harming our economy.”
A Navy spokesman said: “The operational requirements of the Royal Navy are kept under constant review. The Ministry of Defence is committed to ensuring the Royal Navy has the capabilities it needs to meet current and future operational requirements.”