Navy

Navy Considers Foreign Troop Recruitment Amid Serious Staff Shortage

There are simply not enough sailors to man the new aircraft carriers and submarine fleets the Royal Navy has invested so heavily in.

Couple that with the sick leave stymieing efforts to keep ships staffed and the faltering recruitment drive for submarines, and the Senior Service is left in a 'perilous position'.

Retired Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham warned that the Royal Navy needs thousands of new sailors to provide a stopgap.

"From a naval point of view, there is a serious problem. It’s said to be when I last spoke to the Fleet Commander, of the order of 3,500 to 4,000 people."

He said without achieving those numbers ‘it would be impossible to send ships to sea fully manned’.

He added: ‘There is a serious manpower problem which will negate some of the investment we are making in equipment unless it is addressed. There is a deal on the table but it falls very, very far short.

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Last year, HMS Richmond withdrew from a major Nato exercise in the Med after just 3 of its engineers fell ill.

"The Navy has been looking at the possibility of recruiting from other appropriate nations to assist with manning ships."

Colonel Bob Stewart, a member of the defence select committee, told panellists yesterday that the Senior Service is in a ‘perilous situation’.

In efforts to prop up troop numbers, Navy chiefs hope a contingency plan to recruit from various countries and former colonies over the next decade proves successful.

Sailors will be borrowed from the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Col Kemp, a commander of British forces in Afghanistan, added:

‘It is quite shocking that this country, which has produced the world’s greatest Navy, should feel it should have to resort to recruiting from other countries in order to manage the very tiny Navy we’ve got today.