Royal Marines’ new ships will have much smaller crews
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The Royal Marines’ new ships will have crews a quarter of the size of its former vessels, the First Sea Lord has said.
The Telegraph revealed on Monday that Royal Marines are to get up to six new Multi Role Support Ships (MRSS) from which drones can be launched and laser weapons fired.
Admiral Sir Ben Key said “it would be bizarre if we weren’t producing ships with smaller ships companies” after Grant Shapps announced the plan.
The new vessels will replace the ageing HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark amphibious assault ships, as well as RFA Lyme Bay, Mounts Bay and Cardigan Bay.
Speaking to journalists at Lancaster House, Sir Ben said of the MRSS: “I would anticipate that the crew of that will be much smaller than the crew of Albion or Bulwark, which is about 400.”
He said it would be a “mistake” to suggest there would be a possible crew of 250.
A senior Navy source added that while the designs of the new ships needed to be settled on, the numbers for crews “will settle about 120 – 130”. “When you take a ships’ company below that you really start to struggle,” the source said.
Sir Ben said there exists “a sweet spot” when settling on the size of a crew.
“That sweet spot will never be a very small number but neither must it be large numbers in the future,” he said.
“The crews [of MRSS] will be smaller, better skilled and give us the opportunity to make these much more effective.”
He insisted there were good reasons to reduce the size of crews as “technology allows you to reduce the numbers”.
“Why would you put into harm’s way more people than you need to?,” he asked.
Meanwhile, in a speech at Lancaster House on Tuesday, Mr Shapps also revealed that the new Type 26 frigates will be fitted with land strike capabilities.
The Defence Secretary said by doing this it would “ensure our Royal Navy can get the job done whenever they are called to do so”.
Commenting on this new addition to the ships, Sir Ben said: “It’s quite clear that we’re being challenged from the land domain and therefore we need more choice as to how we will engage with them.
“And we can’t always say – we have a lot of attack capability in our submarines, in our SSD astute class submarines at the moment, but we don’t always have astute class submarines in the parts of the world where we need to engage with the threats ashore.
“If a year ago someone had said that the Houthis are going to go and try and close the Red Sea, I think most people would have said that was a highly unlikely scenario. That’s exactly what’s happened.”
