The declining size of Navies

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Owning a collection of secondhand Janes Fighting ships from the 60s up to 2004 and more recent copies of Weyers Flottentaschenbuch I am struck by how with a very few notable exceptions (China) the world's navies have shrunk in size.
The RN built 26 Leander class frigates then only 13 Type 23s and now struggles to find money for 6 to 8 ships. Most European navies have seen similar reductions.
If this trend continues the RN in 2040 may only be able to afford 4 new destroyer/frigate ships. Or perhaps even none at all.
The same is true of course for Armies and Air Forces but the Navies are laid out annually in Janes which makes the comparison easier and starker
 
The Cold War is over, and the public no longer sees the need for such a large fleet, or the government for that matter. The only people asking for a larger budget are the Brass in each nations respective high command.
 
We all know what happened last time people thought this way. If we do not pay for defence now, heopefully before it's too late, we will pay much more for it later. Always giving hope to being ABLE to pay for it later. I for one do not like the thought of being ruled by the PRC but if we have no military force capable of defending us this is one possible future. What is your pleasure folks?
 
Ships have become incredibly expensive, which is almost certainly the driving force to shrinking navies.
 
Yup. In the case of the French Navy: only one carrier, and not enough air defense ship to protect the fleet. The ships themselves are quite good, but not enough can be procured and the fleet is suffering.
 
What is worse is the length of time it takes to physically build anything due to the complexity (that is after the procurement process has run its course) and the small number of yards with the skillset to do it.
 
Complexification arises because Governments take the view "pay for this tomorrow not today", thus they push right (into the future balance sheet) the major decisions and costs.
Often this increases costs, but those are always not at the time of decisions and often set after the coming election. Making it a potential problem for a new incoming government.
Who obviously looks to defer the decisions and costs again.
 
Most of the threats to trade are people operating in very small boats... and even when it isn't piracy the threat of trade interdiction in places like the Persian Gulf consists of ships which are well under 300 tons... the idea of blue water merchant raiding doesn't really exist.

Improving sensor technology, communications equipment, and stand-off weapons also mean that the ability to use ships to move thousands of troops to uncontested landing sites is reduced - landings require air-power for support or using small boats to move short distances along coastlines...

So what is the use of having a large number of large ships? To protect carriers or cruise-missile platforms for use with force-projection (or clearing a landing for marines)? Even hunting submarines is best done by a large number of smaller ships?

The only exception would be, say, if the United States decided they wanted to sink a bunch of Chinese ships to send a message about control over the western Pacific... or if they decided to sink the Russian navy over Syria... and not only would those types of actions (which would involve thousands of deaths to send a political message that could be done through things like tariffs) - they'd also involve going to war with another nuclear power.
 
As ships develop more sophisticated sensors, they can scan wider areas. This leads to the logic that more can be done with fewer ships. Politicians love the "fewer ships" logic because it frees up tax dollars for other projects ... usually civilian.

Another factor is that sophisticated sensors require sophisticated human operators ... better educated ... better paid ... shorter hours on duty ... better food ... better bunks ... better opportunities on civvy street. Hence personnel costs often exceed fuel costs in the better Western navies.
Unfortunately, all those sophisticated sensors are expensive, limiting the number than can be sent to sea.
It is a deadly budget spiral that rushes to the bottom ... pun intended.

As for Communist China being the only navy to expand their fllet ... China has traditionally been a land power that looked inward ... at most meddling with other Asian countries. However, now they seem to have fully exploited their land resources, so now are extending their reach into the South China Sea to strip-mine fish and minerals. At their current rate, China will finish strip-mining the SCS in 20 or 30 years, but the China's current leaders do not care because they will be retired by then.
 
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The problem is one of totalitarianism. It always leads to conflict, even if only to keep their drones in line. Hence the pillage of war graves in the area.
 
Navy's are expensive to build and upkeep is a nightmare.
Plus the constant of trying to have the right ship designs.
Ships are manpower hungry as well, but are the only way
to project power over distance.
 
Another problem is demographics. In a developed country, only about 1% of the population enters military age every year. Obviously, you can't have more than fraction (maybe 5 percent, tops) of that go into professional military service, and full-time military personnel are expensive, so they all have to be supported by the people who don't go into the military.
 
Another problem is demographics. In a developed country, only about 1% of the population enters military age every year. Obviously, you can't have more than fraction (maybe 5 percent, tops) of that go into professional military service, and full-time military personnel are expensive, so they all have to be supported by the people who don't go into the military.
A related demographic issue is declining birth rates. With fewer and fewer military-age males, they can demand higher wages. A few nations are already suffering de-population, while others (e.g. Canada) need a half million immigrants per year to keep enough laborers in the work force.
The human population of this planet will peak around 2050, then decline.
 
Hmm, wonder if the old canal builders ever encountered the declining size of navvies.
Abbasid empire had a declining navy due to deforestation and general collapse.

Another problem is demographics. In a developed country, only about 1% of the population enters military age every year. Obviously, you can't have more than fraction (maybe 5 percent, tops) of that go into professional military service, and full-time military personnel are expensive, so they all have to be supported by the people who don't go into the military.
A related demographic issue is declining birth rates. With fewer and fewer military-age males, they can demand higher wages. A few nations are already suffering de-population, while others (e.g. Canada) need a half million immigrants per year to keep enough laborers in the work force.
The human population of this planet will peak around 2050, then decline.
Canada needs half a million migrants a year to juice up their economy and property sector.
 
Owning a collection of secondhand Janes Fighting ships from the 60s up to 2004 and more recent copies of Weyers Flottentaschenbuch I am struck by how with a very few notable exceptions (China) the world's navies have shrunk in size.
The RN built 26 Leander class frigates then only 13 Type 23s and now struggles to find money for 6 to 8 ships. Most European navies have seen similar reductions.
If this trend continues the RN in 2040 may only be able to afford 4 new destroyer/frigate ships. Or perhaps even none at all.
The same is true of course for Armies and Air Forces but the Navies are laid out annually in Janes which makes the comparison easier and starker
You point out a disturbing trend, and I take your point. However, smaller navies are partially explained by the ever increasing lethality of individual warships. Meaning, tasks that once required fleets, can now be accomplished with fewer ships. A typical frigate of our era is vastly more capable than most surface vessels of the mid twentieth century. The best example of this may be the Nitto Maru incident of the Doolittle Raid on Japan in March of 1942. Nitto Maru was a 90 ton fishing vessel that had been re tasked as a patrol vessel to provide early warning of an attack on the Japanese mainland. She served this purpose, as she spotted the US Task Force, which forced a premature launching of the raid. The escorting USS Nashville was ordered to sink Nitto Maru. Nashville was a Brooklyn-class light cruiser that had commissioned in 1938. She was state of the art, and her 15-6"guns were expected to almost machine gun a target with a fusillade of shells. It took 900 shells to finally put down Nitto Maru (sometimes reported as 700 shells). It was early in the war, and the seas were rough, but it still seems ridiculous. Today, a single missile would have obliterated Nitto Maru. Even a stabilized gun with a radar/laser guided fire control system could likely have put her down with a few shots.

Another partial explanation for smaller fleets, is that Jane's and the other almanacs list huge numbers of ships that were in reserve, particularly in the USN and RN. The reserve fleets finally shrunk, and the almanacs did a better job of listing just which ships were active, and which were in reserve, yet it still led to an impression that the fleets were larger and more capable than they were in practice. In the late sixties, the USN started bulk disposing of war built ships partially to eliminate this pre conception by skeptical lawmakers hedging on funding new construction.

Nashville.jpg Nitto Maru.jpg
 
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Owning a collection of secondhand Janes Fighting ships from the 60s up to 2004 and more recent copies of Weyers Flottentaschenbuch I am struck by how with a very few notable exceptions (China) the world's navies have shrunk in size.
The RN built 26 Leander class frigates then only 13 Type 23s and now struggles to find money for 6 to 8 ships. Most European navies have seen similar reductions.
If this trend continues the RN in 2040 may only be able to afford 4 new destroyer/frigate ships. Or perhaps even none at all.
The same is true of course for Armies and Air Forces but the Navies are laid out annually in Janes which makes the comparison easier and starker
You point out a disturbing trend, and I take your point. However, smaller navies are partially explained by the ever increasing lethality of individual warships. Meaning, tasks that once required fleets, can now be accomplished with fewer ships. A typical frigate of our era is vastly more capable than most surface vessels of the mid twentieth century. The best example of this may be the Nitto Maru incident of the Doolittle Raid on Japan in March of 1942. Nitto Maru was a 90 ton fishing vessel that had been re tasked as a patrol vessel to provide early warning of an attack on the Japanese mainland. She served this purpose, as she spotted the US Task Force, which forced a premature launching of the raid. The escorting USS Nashville was ordered to sink Nitto Maru. Nashville was a Brooklyn-class light cruiser that had commissioned in 1938. She was state of the art, and her 15-6"guns were expected to almost machine gun a target with a fusillade of shells. It took 900 shells to finally put down Nitto Maru (sometimes reported as 700 shells). It was early in the war, and the seas were rough, but it still seems ridiculous. Today, a single missile would have obliterated Nitto Maru. Even a stabilized gun with a radar/laser guided fire control system could likely have put her down with a few shots.

Another partial explanation for smaller fleets, is that Jane's and the other almanacs list huge numbers of ships that were in reserve, particularly in the USN and RN. The reserve fleets finally shrunk, and the almanacs did a better job of listing just which ships were active, and which were in reserve, yet it still led to an impression that the fleets were larger and more capable than they were in practice. In the late sixties, the USN started bulk disposing of war built ships partially to eliminate this pre conception by skeptical lawmakers hedging on funding new construction.
After 20 years in storage, those reserve ships were probably rusted solid and overhaul would have been more expensive and more labor-intensive than new construction.
 
Owning a collection of secondhand Janes Fighting ships from the 60s up to 2004 and more recent copies of Weyers Flottentaschenbuch I am struck by how with a very few notable exceptions (China) the world's navies have shrunk in size.
The RN built 26 Leander class frigates then only 13 Type 23s and now struggles to find money for 6 to 8 ships. Most European navies have seen similar reductions.
If this trend continues the RN in 2040 may only be able to afford 4 new destroyer/frigate ships. Or perhaps even none at all.
The same is true of course for Armies and Air Forces but the Navies are laid out annually in Janes which makes the comparison easier and starker
Continued to ponder this observation, and decided to do a side by side comparison of every navy in order to see which ones have grown, shrunk, or stayed about the same. I compared the Jane's Fighting Ships 1965-66 Edition to the 2015-16 Edition for a neat 50 year time span. There were 105 navies reported in 1965, and 167 in 2015. Many of the new navies are former colonial possessions of the Caribbean, Pacific, South Asia and Africa that are now independent. Most of these are in the police force/coast guard category in terms of function and size. The break up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union yielded a number of new fleets, although Yugoslavia itself no longer exists. The navies of North and South Vietnam became just Viet Nam, while the East and West German navies merged as well.

The big news is that although 18 navies are smaller, 53 are larger! I think that we have a view of shrinking fleet sizes due to the particular navies that have suffered that fate, which are the big ones. Almost all of the NATO nations navies have contracted (Turkey being an exception). I assume that most of SecretProjects readership comes from those countries and therefore jades our viewpoint. The navies of the United States, Russia, UK and France are all much smaller. It can be argued that although a certain navy is smaller than it was 50 years ago, it may be vastly more powerful. France is such an example. SSBNs now give it a massive strategic punch that it did not have in '65, while its' CTOL CVN and SSNs out class anything in their fleet of that time. The long lists of escorts and minesweepers are gone, and six different classes of submarines have been replaced by just two, so it may seem comparably weaker. Nevertheless, numbers do matter. If that one CVN, despite its power, is in overhaul, damaged or sunk, there is no carrier to call upon. In 1965, she had three carriers, all smaller and less capable than Charles De Gaulle, but you could lose one, or even two, and still have a carrier.

Everyone in this readership is well aware of China's spectacular growth. There was no evidence of this in 1965. The mish mash of war built ships posed little threat. Even the newer Soviet designed frigates, submarines and torpedo boats did not seem likely to spawn the fleet of today. The report of the first Osa and Komar class missile boats, and numbers of Shanghai class patrol boats were in line with basic coastal defense. Maybe the note of Golf class SSBs under construction indicated a clear intent to someday enter the naval big time.

Outside of a pair of 1400 ton ex-Norwegian tankers, and a half dozen US-built MSCs, the modest 1965 fleet of South Korea was made up of World War Two built ships transferred from the USN. It could have predictably grown and modernized over the decades, but I am not sure anyone could have guessed that South Korea would become the world's second largest shipbuilder, with an indigenously built navy of ships on par with any other twenty first century fleet. One might expect them to have a modern fleet to counter North Korean infiltration, along with some units to participate with regional allies, but not necessarily the world-class navy that easily ranks in the top ten of today. It might not have made the top 50 in 1965.


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