Send in the Marines? Unfortunately we can't...

With faults restricting RFA Argus to port, the armed forces have no amphibious vessels available for operations; but ministers refuse to accept reality

Last November, the Defence Secretary, John Healey, announced a series of cuts in the armed forces’ budget consequent changes, and losses, of capability. The frigate HMS Northumberland was to be decommissioned, as she had such significant structural damage that the necessary repairs would be uneconomical; 14 Chinook and 17 Puma helicopters would be taken out of service earlier than planned; two Wave-class tankers, RFA Wave Knight and RFA Wave Ruler, would be retired; and the Royal Navy’s two Albion-class amphibious landing ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, would end their service after a period of “extended readiness” in dock as uncrewed reserves. In April this year, the Ministry of Defence confirmed that negotiations were underway to sell both ships to Brazil.

These decisions were taken without firm, or in some cases any, commitments in terms of replacement. Given that the team of external reviewers was by this stage well underway in conducting what would become this year’s Strategic Defence Review, Healey was strictly limited in decisions he could sensibly make or spending he could announce. If that was understandable, it was also a cause for concern. Particularly under threat, it seemed, was the future capabilities of the Royal Marines: the White Paper Defence in a competitive age, published in March 2021, had set out a plan to configure the Royal Marines around two Littoral Response Groups (LRGs) to provide a “special operations-capable force [which] will operate alongside our allies and partners in areas of UK interest, ready to strike from the sea, pre-empt and deter sub-threshold activity, and counter state threats”.

These two groups were to be centred on the two amphibious assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark. Originally, the ships were to be maintained in extended readiness until the delivery of the new Multi-Role Support Ships, renamed Multi-Role Strike Ships earlier this year, of which “up to six” will be procured. However, the assessment phase of the programme will not take place until next year, and the MRSSs will not be in service with the Royal Navy before 2033, leaving a significant capability gap. As I explained in an essay on the future of the Royal Marines last November, in the interim the LRGs are reliant on vessels from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. LRG (North) in theory operates the landing ship dock RFA Mounts Bay, while the core of LRG (South) is the Primary Casualty Receiving Ship RFA Argus, sometimes supplemented by RFA Lyme Bay. RFA Lyme Bay is currently at APCL A&P Tyne for a refit, RFA Mounts Bay is being refitted at APCL A&P Falmouth and the third Bay-class vessel, RFA Cardigan Bay, is currently laid up in Falmouth awaiting a refit in 2026.

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships are not like-for-like replacements for HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark. They have an amphibious capability but they are fundamentally civilian vessels rather than war-fighting ships, built to civilian rather than military standards; they have a smaller overall capacity than the Albion-class vessels; they have flight decks but no aircraft hangars; they are minimally armed; and they do not have the same command-and-control capabilities as the Albion-class. They can perform some but not all of the necessary tasks, to some but not a full degree. Relying on them to bridge the gap in terms of equipping the Littoral Response Groups for an as-yet-undetermined period is not ideal, but the Royal Navy is left with no alternative.

One other enormously significant factor lies in the operation of these ships by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which is made up of civilian personnel, rather than the Royal Navy. This is no slight on the men and women of the RFA, but a huge difference which has been relevant recently is that, as civilian employees, RFA personnel can take industrial action, and have been doing. In January this year, the two trades unions which had organised strikes over pay and working conditions, Nautilus International and the RMT, reached a settlement with the Ministry of Defence; this came after 100 days of industrial action short of a strike and five days on strike from June 2024. It caused serious disruption and there is no guarantee—there can be no such guarantee—that further strike action could take place in the future. For the LRGs to be wholly dependent on RFA vessels, therefore, is an additional vulnerability which would not be a factor if Royal Navy vessels were in use.

At the end of July, there was a further blow to the UK’s amphibious and littoral strike capabilities. RFA Argus, which arrived at HM Naval Base Portsmouth on 8 June, has been declared unfit to put to sea, its safety certification withdrawn by Lloyds Register and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The faults afflicting her are reported to include a leaky ballast tank, difficulties with fire doors and a worn seal on her main aircraft lift. RFA Argus had spent five months at the end of last year and the beginning of this being overhauled at Falmouth, and was due to return for further repairs but now cannot leave Portsmouth under a whole range of problems are resolved. Tom Sharpe, an experienced former Royal Navy officer, writing in The Daily Telegraph, gives a detailed rundown of faults and maintenance procedures.

The Royal Navy has stated that RAF Argus will not put to sea until “all identified defects”; well, no. It cannot. Its safety certification has been withdrawn. That means that the UK armed forces currently have no amphibious or landing ships available at all. The Littoral Response Groups have effectively been withdrawn from our fighting and expeditionary capabilities because there are no vessels from which they can operate.

In June 2022, then-Minister of State for Defence Procurement, Jeremy Quin, wrote to the House of Commons Defence Committee with answers to additional questions arising from its December 2021 report We’re going to need a bigger Navy. He stated that RFA Argus would “be extended in service beyond 2030”, having previously been due for retirement in 2024. A Written Ministerial Answer by James Cartlidge, Minister of State for Defence Procurement, a year later added that the life extension programme would cost £130 million and would maintain RFA Argus in service until 2032.

RFA Argus was launched in November 1980 at Marghera, having been built by Italian shipbuilders Società Italiana Ernesto Breda as container ship MV Contender Bezant. She was taken up from trade in May 1982 during the Falklands conflict, given a basic conversion to allow her to transport helicopters and Harrier jump jets and sailed for the South Atlantic. In November, she was returned to her owners, but the purchased outright in March 1984 for conversion by Harland and Wolff to an aviation training ship, able to transport Sea Harrier fighter aircraft and operate helicopters in the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) role. She was renamed Argus on 25 March 1987 and handed over to the Royal Fleet Auxiliary on 18 March 1988, replacing the helicopter support ship RFA Engadine. In 1991, she had a 70- to 100-bed hospital unit added to act as a Primary Casualty Receiving Ship, her principal—but not only—role until she became the principal vessel of LRG (South) in 2023.

This goes to the heart of the problem. The Ministry of Defence is left without a single amphibious or landing ship of any kind available for service partly because of the sudden withdrawal of RFA Argus’s safety certification, but that is as much a symptom as a cause. That there are serious maintenance problems with a ship which is 45 years old should not come as a surprise to the RFA or the MoD. Only the Hunt-class mine countermeasure vessel HMS Ledbury is older, having been launched in December 1979 (excepting ship of the line HMS Victory, commissioned in 1778 and the flagship of the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins RM).

The overarching problem is a persistent faith in the Ministry of Defence, under governments of all parties, that everything will turn out all right in the end. Corners can be cut, maintenance deferred, capabilities gapped, equipment kept in service just a little longer, and somehow the armed forces will muddle through. I have often said that the “can-do” spirit and practicality of the armed forces has in many ways been counter-productive: ministers have asked for the near-impossible, and senior military commanders have delivered enough of what was demanded to undermine any argument for more resources, urgency of replacement or maintenance and complaints that equipment is simply inadequate. We are seeing that now.

At Cartlidge’s 2023 estimate, RFA Argus has seven years left in service; that is dependent on at least the first Multi-Role Strike Ship being in operation by 2032. To be clear, this class of vessels is not under construction, or even in design. The Royal Navy has only just set out its requirements, and as of last year the MRSSs were due in 2033/34. Of those seven years, how many will be spent undergoing its life extension programme? Her overhaul at APCL A&P Falmouth took five months; a refit in 2018-19 took 10 months, a life extension programme in 2009-10 lasted over a year and a 2005-06 refit took 10 months. It is certainly hard to imagine RFA Argus returning to service much before 2027, and there are plenty who think she may never return. Tom Sharpe is a sceptic:

I would imagine that dear old Argus is done for. She’d be much too expensive to repair and possibly unrepairable anyway. Her crew will provide valuable relief elsewhere in the overstretched service, quite likely to RFA Mounts Bay later this year. And we’ll just have to get by with one fewer amphibious ship and no casualty receiving ship at all any more.

This does not take place in a vacuum. Let us look at the Strategic Defence Review: this sets out three roles for the Royal Navy, of which “littoral strike” is part of the second, “Deter and defend in the Euro-Atlantic”. It goes on to say:

Amphibious Advance Force operations remain a critical focus for the Royal Marines Commando Force, operating in some of the most extreme environments and offering political choice for action worldwide. These operations should increasingly focus on supporting NATO requirements, including integrating into the UK-led Strategic Reserve Corps when appropriate.

It later reiterates, in reference to the Army, that “planning should include the integration of the Royal Marines Commando Force into the SRC [NATO Strategic Reserves Corps] when appropriate”. It further states that the Royal Navy’s “unique capabilities”, including “amphibious operations”, “make a critical contribution to homeland resilience. These must be maintained.”

That is currently not possible on any scale. We cannot, as of August 2025, conduct amphibious operations or littoral strike because we have no ships capable of forming the core of functioning Littoral Support Groups. We also have commitments to our NATO allies: in March, more than 2,000 personnel from the UK Commando Force—principally but not exclusively Royal Marines—took part in Exercise Joint Viking, a NATO exercise in northern Norway. 45 Commando operated from RFA Lyme Bay, and they:

acted as the tip of the allied spear, carrying out reconnaissance patrols to gain an understanding of ‘enemy’ positions and strength before carrying out strikes on targets to fundamentally weaken their adversary. Ultimately their work paved the way for the larger allied force to land ashore, which later was tasked with capturing the Norwegian port of Sørreisa as the last objective of Joint Viking.

Commander James Smith, Commander Amphibious Task Force, said all the right things from an MoD point of view. The exercise allowed the Commando Force to “deepen its multilateral partnerships, working with key allies as we seek to deter Russia on NATO’s Northern Flank” and it “continue[s] to set and shape the High North theatre as the advanced force ahead of any crisis or conflict by demonstrating our flexibility and adaptability in challenging conditions”.

Except now it can’t, because RFA Lyme Bay is in port for maintenance, as are RFA Mounts Bay and RFA Cardigan Bay. Meanwhile RFA Argus cannot even sail to Falmouth to begin her refit and life extension until her existing faults are addressed and she can leave Portsmouth. So in the event of a Russian threat to NATO’s Northern Flank (essentially Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea, which with the accession of Finland in 2023 and Sweden in 2024 entirely comprises NATO member states) the United Kingdom can provide Royal Marines and other Commando-trained personnel, but we cannot deploy them amphibiously nor from a significant amphibious-capable command vessel. Our allies know this. And undoubtedly the Russians know this.

We are in that infuriating and despair-inducing kind of situation which has undoubtedly been in large part caused by lack of resources, yet, is now of such severity and immediacy, that no realistic expenditure can resolve it quickly. Stuffing the mouths of marine engineering companies with gold cannot make the time the refit and maintenance of the RFA vessels will require significantly shorter, nor can it speed up the procurement of the MRSSs to have them in service now, or for several years. HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, which would have needed substantial work, have now been sold. Short of buying new amphibious ships, like US Navy’s America-class landing helicopter assault ships, French Mistral-class landing helicopter docks or the Royal Australian Navy’s Canberra-class landing helicopter dock vessels, which is not within the realms of possibility, we have a serious capability gap that we simply cannot fill.

What is the government’s response? In April, the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, Maria Eagle, gave a flawless nothing-to-see-here response to a Written Question from Conservative backbencher Ben Obese-Jecty:

Amphibious operations will continue to be delivered by the Bay Class and RFA Argus until the introduction of the Multi Role Strike Ship, which will succeed the amphibious fleet in the 2030s.

Following the repetition of a statement in the House of Lords of a Ministerial Statement on the Strategic Defence Review on 3 June, Lord Coaker, Minister of State for Defence, reassured his immediate predecessor the Earl of Minto:

we are committed to amphibious capabilities. The noble Earl will know that we have the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships which provide that at the moment. He will know that fleet support ships will be built in Belfast to help support that. He will also know that the new First Sea Lord, with his background, will ensure that there is no shortage of amphibious capability, which will be important as well.

No shortage of amphibious capability? There is a challenge indeed for the First Sea Lord.

On 2 July, Luke Pollard, Minister for the Armed Forces, was challenged by David Reed, Conservative MP for Exmouth and Exeter East, on the capabilities available to the armed forces. He answered, as is the form, firmly and confidently without recourse to evidence.

We have a strong commitment to the amphibious role of the Royal Marines and to the multi-role strike ship, as set out in the strategic defence review… the Royal Marines have a very bright and strong future in our armed forces… we have a strong commitment to the future of the Royal Marines and to amphibiocity.

The following day, Eagle answered a Written Question from Conservative Shadow Defence Minister Mark Francois on the subject of RFA Lyme Bay.

RFA Lyme Bay is undergoing routine planned maintenance to ensure continued sustainability for operations. Royal Marines operations continue to be supported by the remainder of the amphibious fleet. These ships will continue to support amphibious capabilities until the Multi Role Strike Ship enters service in the early 2030s.

This might be an acceptable answer if there were any ships in service in “the remainder of the amphibious fleet”, but, as we have seen, there are now not.

Finally, just before Parliament adjourned for the summer, Coaker answered a Written Ministerial Question from Conservative former defence minister Baroness Goldie on improving the amphibious capabilities of the Royal Navy.

Following the Strategic Defence Review 2025, the Royal Navy is progressing plans to enhance its amphibious capabilities through investment in new amphibious shipping including the Multi Role Strike Ship, Littoral Response Groups and the ongoing modernisation of the Commando Force. Final decisions on capability will be informed by the Defence Investment Plan in autumn 2025.

The short version of this might read “I’m saying nothing, wait for the Defence Investment Plan”.

If you read those ministerial pronouncements and nothing else, you would be entitled to conclude that perhaps capabilities were under a degree of strain but that was a temporary measure, and all would be well with the Royal Marines, the Littoral Support Groups and “amphibiocity”, to quote Pollard, in short order. We know none of that is true, and we can point to the evidence. The government’s response almost beggars belief. It consistently and determinedly ignores reality, cites no counter case, but stresses its “commitment” (as if being “committed” to something were enough alone to make it happen) and moves on.

I have been protesting about this “wild-eyed denialism” which is endemic at the Ministry of Defence since before the general election, in CapX in May 2024, in The Spectator in April, and as long ago as July 2019 I said that “we’re drinking champagne on a prosecco budget—maybe not even that—and we haven’t, despite several reviews, squared that circle”. This refusal to acknowledge reality or engage in any detail with critical views is visible in Parliament, in meetings of the Defence Committee and Public Accounts Committee, and in the media, and it remains the Ministry of Defence’s chosen strategy.

Change is coming, albeit not (as far as we expect) at a ministerial level. Next month Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton will succeed Admiral Sir Tony Radakin as Chief of the Defence Staff; the Permanent Under-Secretary of State, David Williams, has unexpectedly been given his marching orders and will step down in September; and the quest continues for a permanent appointment to the new post of National Armaments Director, the supposedly preferred candidate, Andrew Davies, CEO of Kier Group, reportedly having decided the job was not for him.

(According to The Observer, the only candidate still part of the initial recruitment process is Sir Jeremy Quin, formerly Minister of State for Defence Procurement and for five months Chairman of the House of Commons Defence Committee; he was also part of the team supporting the three principal authors of the Strategic Defence Review.)

The Defence Secretary, John Healey, is undertaking a programme of what he calls “Defence Reform”, an admittedly very wide-ranging shake-up of the Ministry of Defence which will see it run in official terms by a “quad”: the Permanent Secretary, the Chief of the Defence Staff, the National Armaments Director and the Chief of Defence Nuclear, currently Madelaine McTernan. Will this lead to a change of culture, a rejection of denialism and an embrace of basic facts? We will see, but I would advise against any breath-holding. In the meantime, say a prayer to your god or whatever being or spirit you invoke that we are not required to conduct amphibious operations in the near future. Whatever ministers and officials may tell you, we can’t.