Thirty-three Royal Navy warships have left operational service since 2010, and eight of them have gone to new owners. Another 15 have been recycled, and 10 are listed as pending disposal, according to figures from the Ministry of Defence.
The figures follow the hulls past their last day in operational service. They show the Royal Navy’s retired warships split three ways since 2010, between sale, recycling and a queue of ships the MoD has not yet disposed of.
The Ministry of Defence set out the totals in a written answer to a parliamentary question, published Oct. 22. “Since 2010, 33 Royal Navy warships have been taken out of operational service,” the answer begins. “Of these, 8 have been sold, 15 have been recycled and 10 are pending disposal.”
One total, not a year-by-year list
The question, tabled Oct. 14, asked how many warships since 2010 had been taken out of operational service, sold or scrapped, broken down by year. The answer gives a single figure for each category covering the whole period. It does not list the ships, name them, or give a year for any of them.
It also warns against treating the numbers as a running count. The answer says “these categories are not mutually exclusive, and the figures should not be aggregated,” because a ship may be taken out of service in one year and then sold or recycled in a later one.
What “pending disposal” leaves open
The largest open question in the answer is the 10 ships still pending disposal. The MoD does not say how long they have waited, where they are held, or whether they are expected to be sold or recycled. Nor does it break down which of the eight sales went to foreign navies and which to other buyers.
The answer uses “recycled” for the category the question called scrapped. It gives no detail on where that work was done.
The ships the MoD says are coming
The answer turns from disposals to replacements in its closing lines. It says the government “is investing in new frigates, amphibious ships, new submarines and new standardised vessels,” along with “a new Hybrid Navy of uncrewed and autonomous systems.”
Some of that Hybrid Navy has been given designations. The UK’s Defence Investment Plan “has detailed four platform types to be introduced into Royal Navy (RN) service,” Naval News reported on July 1. As described in that report, the Type 92 is an uncrewed underwater vehicle meant to support the Type 26 anti-submarine frigates, the Type 93 is an extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle for anti-submarine work, and the Type 94 and Type 91 are an uncrewed sensing platform and an uncrewed missile platform.
The Oct. 22 answer gives no timetable for any of those programmes. On the record it leaves 10 withdrawn warships still pending disposal and a fleet the MoD says it is rebuilding with a mix of crewed ships and uncrewed systems.