Eleven days after the start of the Iran war, the first British warship to be deployed to the eastern Mediterranean set sail from Portsmouth on Tuesday.
The UK Ministry of Defence said the Royal Navy had completed six weeks’ worth of work in just six days to ready HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer, for deployment, including resupplying its air defence missiles.
But delays to the advanced warship’s departure have prompted intense scrutiny of the availability of the Royal Navy’s surface fleet, amid wider criticism of the UK’s slowness to bolster defensive military support for allies in the Middle East.
Admiral Lord Alan West, a former head of the Royal Navy, told the FT there had been “a lack of some direction in the MoD” in recent months and criticised the “bizarre” decision to remove warships from the region in recent months, rather than reinforce the Royal Navy’s presence.
An ageing Type 23 frigate returned from Bahrain last December and was withdrawn from service, while an ageing Royal Navy minehunter in the Gulf was brought back to the UK on a heavy-lift vessel this month.
West, a Labour peer and former security minister, said: “We seem to lack that ability to make the right grand strategic decisions with regard to the maritime domain . . . It’s very embarrassing for us.”
Meanwhile “the French are jumping on this with vigour”, he added, referring to France’s pledge to send extra warships — 10 frigates and two amphibious assault ships — to the Mediterranean and Red Sea. They will join its aircraft carrier already in the region.
HMS Dragon, which offers sophisticated air defence capabilities, will sail to Cyprus 10 days after the Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri was hit by a drone. UK officials suspect it was launched by militant group Hizbollah in Lebanon. Other drones headed for the base have since been intercepted.
The warship’s deployment comes after the Cypriot government publicly expressed its disappointment in the UK over its failure to do more to protect the island, which houses two British military bases.
The MoD also said on Tuesday that it had placed a humanitarian relief ship at heightened readiness for a potential civilian evacuation mission from the Middle East.
RFA Lyme Bay, a Bay-class landing ship with medical facilities and an aviation platform, is being prepared for a possible deployment to help Britons potentially leave Lebanon, according to officials.
Israel is launching heavy attacks against Hizbollah in the country, as part of an extended campaign against the group that is likely to continue beyond the end of the war against Iran, according to people briefed on the talks.
UK defence secretary John Healey has sought to defend the government’s approach, stressing on Monday that the UK had pre-positioned RAF Typhoons, F-35s, counter-drone teams, radars and air defence in the region since January, with extra military assets sent since the conflict began.
But West said “salami slicing of defence over a prolonged period” had damaged the maintenance of Britain’s warships, which in turn had adversely affected the availability of the surface fleet.
The Conservatives have also heaped censure on the government over its support for allies in the region since the US and Israel launched air strikes against Iran, and the Tehran regime retaliated with attacks across the Gulf.
Shadow Tory defence secretary James Cartlidge said: “There is not a single Royal Navy warship present [in the region] and our Type 45, HMS Dragon, has only just set sail.”
Cartlidge said it was not the fault of the Royal Navy but “a political failure” by a government that had “dithered” and left allies in the Middle East “far more exposed than they should have been”.
Tan Dhesi, Labour chair of the House of Commons defence committee, this week said the military was overstretched geographically – with its presence also required in the High North to combat the threat from Russia – and that underfunding over many years had left Britain with insufficient assets.
Speaking in parliament, Dhesi called on ministers to “urgently . . . rectify the situation and increase the investment in defence in the near future, so that we can be in several places at once”.
Healey on Monday criticised “14 years of our armed forces being hollowed out and underfunded under the previous government” and highlighted extra funding that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced for defence last year.
However, despite that uplift, the MoD is still facing a funding gap of up to £28bn over the next decade and the government’s 10-year defence investment plan has been repeatedly delayed.
One defence official said the head of Britain’s military should also face scrutiny for the failure to send more Royal Navy and British Army assets to the region in the run-up to the war, even as the presence of US forces grew in recent weeks.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, chief of defence staff, had failed to realise that not deploying warships amounted to an “absence of theatre” that was required to secure the confidence of UK allies, the official said.
An MoD spokesperson said: “We acted early to protect British people and British interests, and to support our allies. As the scale of Iran’s indiscriminate strikes emerged, we have further boosted our presence by sending four additional Typhoon jets to Qatar, deploying Wildcat and Merlin helicopters and deploying HMS Dragon.”