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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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The United Kingdom, a key U.S. ally, is facing scrutiny around the condition of its navy ahead of large-scale NATO drills after two British vessels deployed to the Middle East collided.
British Conservative MP Penny Mordaunt, said on Sunday that the U.K.'s navy and its allies "must keep pace with the growing capabilities of other nations."
"If not Britain's interests cannot be secured," she added.
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On Friday, the U.K. military said two of its mine-hunter vessels had collided in a port in Bahrain, but there were no injuries. Social media footage appeared to show the HMS Chiddingfold reverse into the HMS Bangor at the dock.
"First of all I would like to stress that thankfully nobody was hurt in the collision, but some damage was sustained," Rear Admiral Edward Ahlgren said in a statement on Friday.
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"Why this happened is still to be established," he added. "We train our people to the highest standards and rigorously enforce machinery safety standards, but unfortunately incidents of this nature can still happen."
A "full and thorough" investigation is now underway, the Royal Navy said.
"This incident highlights some of the flawed assumptions behind the defense procurement not only in the U.K. but more widely across NATO," said William Freer, a research fellow with the U.K.-based Council on Geostrategy. The availability of platforms like warships is "already such a problem in the U.K. and NATO," he told Newsweek, adding that the alliance needs to invest in building up and sustaining its military power to deter adversarial countries that have poured funds into their defense budgets, he said.
"We must not just ask ourselves by how much Russia and China are increasing their fleets, but why," Mordaunt told London's The Sunday Times in a weekend report that asked the question: "[W]ith the fleet in managed decline for decades, how will [the U.K.] cope with future conflict?"
"From protecting shipping in the Red Sea to patrolling every ocean to keep the U.K.'s interests safe, the Royal Navy is operating globally 24 hours a day," a Royal Navy spokesperson told Newsweek in a statement. "We are investing heavily in the future fleet with 8 new Type 26 and 5 new Type 31 frigates due to bolster the Navy in the next decade. As announced this week the ambition is to raise defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP when fiscal and economic conditions allow."
The Type 26 is a new anti-submarine warfare frigate to be phased into service between 2028 and 2035. The Type 31 is a more general-purpose frigate that is to be rolled out from the mid-2020s.
Western experts broadly say Russia's naval fleet is taking a hit from Moscow's nearly two year-old war in Ukraine, although its submarines are a formidable force.
But China has tipped significant resources into developing its navy, swelling its size in a few short years—and it shows few signs of slowing down. The U.S. and its allies are acutely aware of China's status as "numerically the largest navy in the world" with 370 ships and submarines, as per the Pentagon's annual report on the Chinese military, released in mid-October.
The collision is "a warning about the fragility of having small armed forces, in the maritime domain or any of the other domains of operation, in an age in which armed conflict is more likely, in particular against potential adversaries who have large forces," commented former NATO official, Edward Hunter Christie.
In a wartime scenario, accidents or damage sustained by vessels could "leave mid-sized powers like the U.K, and European countries in particular, vulnerable and under-resourced," he told Newsweek.
"It isn't clear whether European governments take adequately into account the losses in military capacities that a full-scale war could lead to and the need to plan for greater capacities so as to have the ability to stay in the fight in case of significant losses," he added.
NATO generals have questioned whether the U.K. has retained its status as a premier fighting force, battling its way through a "recruitment crisis," the Sunday Times reported.
Although the U.S. Navy is considered a fearsome power, analysts have nonetheless described it as overstretched as it attempts to assert Washington's presence in hotspots across the globe.
NATO navies will gather for the alliance's Exercise Steadfast Defender, starting next month and running until the middle of the year.
British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said on January 15 that the U.K. would send 2,000 sailors, eight warships and submarines and more than 400 Royal Marines Commandos as part of the large-scale drills.
"We are in a new era and we must be prepared to deter our enemies," Shapps said.
Update 01/23/2024, 5:40 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a response from the Royal Navy.
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