“Two-thirds of the world is our playground,” the lieutenant commander said. Ben Evans, commander of HMS Spey, a 2,000-ton, 300-meter-long offshore patrol vessel that will team up with HMS Tamar for a mission that is not expected to return them to their home port of Portsmouth until 2026.
As they patrol the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, warships will venture as far as the Bering Sea and south to New Zealand and the Australian state of Tasmania.
At the heart of this region is China, with whom tensions are heating up with Britain’s main ally, the United States.
“They will act like the eyes and ears of the Navy and the nation of the region, working alongside British allies, conducting security patrols to deal with drug exploitation, smuggling, terrorism and other illegal activities. “Joining forces with other armies and armed forces, and hoisting the world flag of Great Britain,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
HMS Spey and HMS Tamar each carry a crew of 46, members of whom the Royal Navy says will be changed as often as every few weeks as the service tries to gain regional experience to its crews, though it will not burn them at a distance. mission launched. This will also allow ships to spend up to nine months at a time at sea, the navy said.
“2,000-ton Swiss Army Knives”
Ships will not have a permanent base in the Pacific. Instead, they will call on bases and ports of allies and partners that best suit their mission, the navy said.
Along with their normal crews, the ships will house up to 52 members of the Royal Marines or other troops, who can help with specific missions, “a versatility that makes the ships 2,000-ton razors of the Swiss army,” according to the navy statement.
The ships headed west to the Atlantic from Portsmouth to begin deployment Tuesday. They will pass through the Panama Canal to head to their new Pacific patrol area.
Spey and Tamar have achieved a “dazzling painting” from the First World War era for their mission in the Pacific. The painting scheme was intended to make warships more difficult to track a hundred years ago, at a time when the British fleet was considered the best in the world.
“With our painting schemes, we stand out: we look different. We’ll fly together at the White Ensign in the Indo-Pacific region. People will know the Royal Navy is back,” said Evans, Spey’s commander.
Allies in the UK and partners across the region have already met the modern Royal Navy this summer with the deployment of Britain’s largest warship, the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, in the region.
This followed after the first exercises between strike groups of American and British carriers, as the carrier USS Carl Vinson and his escorts performed combined exercises with Queen Elizabeth in the Pacific. F-35 stealth fighter jets from both carriers conducted training operations during these exercises.
Defense cooperation between the United Kingdom and Japan
Queen Elizabeth visited the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan this week, with Japanese defense officers and military officers visiting the company on Monday.
Yokosuka is also the home port of the US carrier USS Ronald Reagan, the only one of the 11 U.S. Navy aircraft carriers based outside the United States.
This is seen as a symbol of the strong U.S. defense commitment to Japan, the kind of ties Britain wants to promote in the Pacific with Queen Elizabeth and her other warships.
“The visit to Japan of HMS Queen Elizabeth and other British ships of the Carrier Strike Group is a confidential embodiment of the close and deep relationship between the United Kingdom and Japan,” said British Ambassador to Japan Julia Longbottom in a statement.
“The UK-Japan relationship has a long history. We believe this visit marks the elevation of our defense and security relationship to a new level,” he said.
The three partners, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, have expressed their vocation on what they call the growing Chinese threat to security in the Asia-Pacific.
In its defense white paper published this summer, Tokyo took a firm stand against what it called China’s “unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas.” mention Britain as a key partner to share his vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”.
For its part, China has mocked the presence of the British carrier and other warships in the region.
Writing in Chinese state media when Queen Elizabeth traveled across the South China Sea in late July, Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for Marine Studies of South China, described the deployment of the British carrier as an attempt to “relive the glory days of the British Empire”. . “
“The South China Sea was a symbol of Britain’s glorious colonial past, through which the ancient empire that boasted of its world colonies sent the fortune and treasures it plundered to Asia,” he said. write Wu.
On Wednesday, Hu Xijin, editor of state tabloid The Global Times, blurred the importance of the British fleet’s pride in Pacific waters.
“The British aircraft carrier’s visit to Japan was seen by Chinese netizens as a hug from two thugs hired in the US. In the eyes of Chinese netizens, the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is useless as a dredger,” Hu said on Twitter.