Russian naval aggression prompts new defensive initiative with ‘beer-drinking nations’
British defence minister Luke Pollard has announced a new 10-country maritime defensive initiative in response to a 41% rise in Russian naval activity around the UK over the first nine months of the year.
The initiative, dubbed the alliance of beer-drinking nations, will see sea drones from the UK and other countries able to team up with warships from across the Northern Navies Initiative.
The plan aims to increase lethality by combining warships and drones, a model where British autonomy can be handed off to an allied nation’s warship, such as a Danish or Norwegian vessel.
Defence minister Luke Pollard said the move was a direct response to a 41% surge in Russian naval activity around the UK, a figure he described as “a huge increase”.
“The model that we want is where British autonomy [drones] can be teamed with a British warship or a Danish warship or a Norwegian warship and can hand that autonomy off to an allied nation’s warship,” Pollard said.
Shortages and budget boost
The Royal Navy faces a severe shortage of vessels, with the number of British frigates potentially dropping from 12 in 2021 to just three by 2030.
A cross-party defence select committee warned last month that the navy risked failing to deter Russian aggression due to shortfalls in the number and availability of warships and submarines.
Pollard blamed the Conservatives for the capacity shortfalls, accusing them of cutting budgets and delaying investment when they were in government.
The government has allocated an extra £10bn a year to defence from 2030, a move the minister said would send a “clear demand signal to industry” to tackle the Russian threat.
Russian activity and new investments
Russian spy ships, such as the Yantar, have been sailing near UK waters to obtain “an increased picture of our critical national infrastructure” and “mapping our undersea cables”.
Russia’s northern fleet, based in the Barents Sea, retains a “really formidable undersea presence” and has continued to be a means of threatening the UK throughout the Ukraine war.
A further £90m will be spent on underwater drones and sensors to monitor the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, a strategic choke point in the navy’s “high north”.
The UK is also investing £1.5bn in sea drones over four years, with the first major spending announcements following the October budget.
Drone warfare and future threats
Ukraine has used cheap sea drones to destroy around a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, forcing it to relocate from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk.
The former head of Ukraine’s military, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said the increasingly complex use of sea drones meant that “it is likely that the world’s navies are on the verge of the most radical transformation since the rise of torpedo technology”.
Pollard insisted that the Royal Navy was “ready to fight tonight”, even though it took three weeks to send a destroyer to Cyprus after the UK base at Akrotiri was struck by a drone.
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