Is Britain right to sacrifice capability today for ‘jam’ tomorrow?
The Big Ask | No. 15.2025
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has confirmed that an agreement has been signed between the Brazilian Navy and the Royal Navy regarding the sale of HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark – two amphibious assault ships. Despite out-of-service dates for both vessels being in the 2030s, and with replacement ships several years away, the sale confirms speculation that the Royal Navy intends to dispose of its two Albion class ships as a part of wider armed forces cost-saving measures. The decision to decommission the Albion class ships was made alongside a number of other announcements which came about due to a desire to reinvest the savings in future capabilities.
These decisions reflect a wider pattern of behaviour in which the United Kingdom (UK) has often cut or reduced existing capabilities to focus on investing in future programmes. With this in mind, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked five experts: Is Britain right to sacrifice capability today for ‘jam’ tomorrow?
Associate Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Associate Fellow, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre
The potential sale of amphibious assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark to the Brazilian Navy raises the important question of whether Britain – in the current climate – can afford to sacrifice immediate operational readiness for future gains. Modern conflict highlights the need to combine modernisation efforts, advanced technologies, and conventional platforms and weaponry.
Part of broader cost-saving measures, the sale aims to modernise the Royal Navy’s amphibious capabilities long-term. However, as the only two ships of their kind, their loss will impact the Royal Navy’s ability to support large-scale amphibious operations until Multi-Role Strike Ships (MRSSs) are introduced in the 2030s. Given the current geopolitical climate, threat from Russia and UK leadership in the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), this is a major concern. If the sale goes ahead, interim solutions (though imperfect) could include leasing or adapting civilian vessels – Roll-On, Roll-Off Passenger (RoPax) or Pure Car and Truck Carrier (PCTC) ships – for shorter crossings where extensive accommodation and support functions aren’t required.
While recognising the challenge of striking the right balance between modernising and maintaining sufficient current capabilities, the sale of these relatively new ships, and the capability gap it will leave, highlights a wider planning problem in defence. It is difficult to justify disposing of such ‘modern’ tonnage in the current climate – recently, HMS Bulwark was docked and halfway through modernisation. Unused, the ships still signal capacity; selling them now sends the wrong message, saves little and undermines credibility. Taxpayers may very well question the rationale behind this decision.
Ultimately, modernisation must go hand-in-hand with creatively leveraging existing assets and partnerships to meet evolving threats. A lot of it comes down to timing, which depends on a planning process flexible enough to adapt when needed.
Freelance columnist, Daily Telegraph, and ex-commander, Royal Navy
There are three problems with the ‘jam tomorrow’ problem typified by the early sale of the Albion class ships.
First is the year-on-year, treasury-led nature of the accounting which leads to these decisions. This process does not have ‘military effect’ at its core; rather it has ‘saving money from a department which is seen as fair game’. Consequentially, it always happens too early in the lifecycle, leaving capability gaps which the gold-plated replacement then fills late and in insufficient numbers. As a process it is flawed, and must be changed.
Second is the pernicious way ‘jam tomorrow’ manifests – ‘accept this cut or there will be no jam at all’. This doesn’t even need to be said out loud; it is the rules of the game and accepted by anyone in the service who wishes to progress. In the case of HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, it removed any attempt at fighting back against the crewing or engineering challenges that getting them back to sea would have presented. As a cultural issue, it must be addressed.
The third problem – created by the first two – is Britain’s inability to maintain reserves (equipment and people). As the UK enters the age of autonomy, having a platform like this available would have been useful. And this is just one example. However, the armed forces’ fixation with high-intensity fighting and warship vulnerability means that it forgets mass has a might too. It is almost inconceivable that Britain will storm the beach again – but that doesn’t render the ship itself useless. This is a mindset issue which must be mitigated.
At some point in the next ten years, the UK is going to wish that it had one of these ships still in mothball. To stop this issue happening again (and again), the process, culture and mindset all need to change, as does the number in the bottom right corner of the spreadsheet which causes so many of the problems in the first place. To not do so is to pretend that the status quo is working.
Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy
Force design, and the procurement of military equipment to make those designs a reality, is subject to numerous difficult tensions. How soon is soon enough, how sovereign is sovereign enough, resilience versus redundancy and flexibility versus focused requirements are just some of these inherent tensions. The decision regarding the sale of HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark is symbolic of the fact that for many years now, Britain has given more weight to squeezing efficiency out of current capabilities to find savings now for investing in future capabilities. Though there are valid arguments to be made for this approach, the fact that His Majesty’s (HM) Treasury seems allergic to the idea of spending money to keep equipment in reserve is a problem.
For the sake of a few million pounds a year – a miniscule fraction of the defence budget – both ships could be kept in reserve. If recruitment and retention difficulties abate, then the UK no longer faces an amphibious warfare capability gap (rebuilding expertise after even short gaps is notoriously difficult). If the crewing problem does not abate, then at least the prospect of these ships being reactivated is something an adversary has to factor into their plans. After all, in a peer conflict, it is likely that ships will be lost (even in peacetime it is possible to lose ships through accidents, as the Royal New Zealand Navy has recently shown), and it takes many years to construct new ones; having ships in reserve builds in redundancy.
Given the threat picture over the next few years, surely capability today should be afforded more weight than it usually is in comparison to jam tomorrow?
Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Exeter
British military posture throughout the post-Cold War era has been a recurring tale of sacrificing current capabilities in hope of a better future force. ‘Better’ has often been understood as a qualitative upgrade (i.e., superior technology) – although the decade-old 2015 Defence Review pledged that there would eventually be quantitative uplifts too (e.g., in the Royal Navy’s frigate fleet).
The recently announced sale of the UK’s two amphibious assault ships continues that trend. In many ways, it makes sense: the ships are ageing (thus holding waning resale value), burdensome to crew and maintain (years of recruitment and retention problems have left the Royal Navy struggling with personnel numbers) and of contested strategic relevance (beach assaults look to be an ever-more challenging prospect as anti-ship weaponry proliferates). So, if the Royal Navy ever wants to see those hoped-for increases in frigates, autonomous systems, weapons types/stockpiles, etc., the MOD has judged that two costly ships optimised for a decreasingly plausible mission have to go.
Unfortunately, however, such ‘jam tomorrow’ trade-offs could still bite Britain in the behind, especially in an era of intensifying great power threats and dubious United States (US) alliance commitments. The UK and its (non-US) allies could easily find themselves facing various possible amphibious contingencies, from the Baltic region, to Svalbard and Norway, to the Falkland Islands. Furthermore, two large warships with sizeable flight decks and extensive command facilities could be – and have been – turned to other valuable uses. Beyond the obvious, such as disaster relief and maritime security, such vessels – if modestly upgraded – could have served as useful ‘assault cruisers’, combining amphibious capability with broader utility (similar to France’s Jeanne d’Arc or the Royal Navy’s Tiger class cruisers). Still, the choice has been made, and so now the Navy – and the citizenry it protects – must hope that yet more cuts in the present lead to a better future force before that future turns violent.
Research Fellow (Sea Power), Council on Geostrategy
A core part of defence planning is figuring out how to weave new or updated capabilities into the force, and consequently how best to phase out the capabilities being replaced. In an ideal world of expansive resources, there would be a great deal of redundancy in capabilities – as new ships come into service, their predecessors would be kept functional as a reserve or supplemental capability; not regularly deployed, but available quickly in times of crisis.
However, we do not live in an ideal world, and restricted resources mean that there are trade-off decisions to be made. Defence planners must balance the need for available and reserve capabilities with the financial context and the timescales for investment in newer platforms and equipment, as well as balancing between investment in different kinds of capability based on what is most required. If an older ship costs more to keep maintained and crewed than the benefit it offers in capability, for example, then it may make sense for that vessel to go – as long as that capability will be replaced.
Ultimately, investing in future capabilities is the goal, and making some sacrifices now to reach that end is necessary in the current context. The true question is what this investment will actually look like – jam tomorrow is fine, but it needs to be the right kind of jam.
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