The Curious RN Littoral Response Group
The Admiralty back in 2019 spitballed a concept dubbed the “Littoral Response Group,” a sort of pocket-sized amphibious warfare task group that could still be built around the Royal Navy’s shrinking force of ‘phibs and Royal Marines to deploy from them.
The trial LRG deployment, to the Baltic in 2021, was made up of the 20,000-ton amphibious assault ship HMS Albion (L14), the 16,000-ton landing dock RFA Mounts Bay (L3008), plus an escort in the form of the Type 23 frigate HMS Lancaster, with embarked Wildcat helicopters from 847 Naval Air Squadron and a light battalion-sized element of Royal Marines from 45 and 30 Commando.
Now, a pared-down Indo-Pacific-bound LRG, which is now forward deployed “East of Suez” after service in the Mediterranean, consists of just two vessels– neither one a proper warship. Both are Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships, manned by civilian RFA staff with RN detachments for commo and gunnery, roughly akin to the civilian mariners of the MSC here in America.
The two vessels, the 16,000-ton dock landing ship RFA Lyme Bay (L3007) and 28,000-ton converted container ship RFA Argus (A135)— have a self-defense armament of just three 20mm CIWS, two DS30B Mk 1 30 mm guns, two Oerlikon 20 mm guns, 8 .50 cal Brownings and 10 7.62mm L7 GPMGs between them as well as a few soft kill options such as Seagnat chaff launchers. Nothing with a range further than about 6,000 yards.
And you thought the LCS was underarmed!
RFA Lyme Bay (L3007)
RFA Argus (A135)
Capable of supporting over 500 embarked troops and RN personnel, they have deployed to the Pacific with just 3 large Merlin Mk 4 helicopters of 845 Naval Air Squadron, some mixed UAVs, and an embarked company of about 130 Marines from 40 Commando.
Argus and Lyme Bay are currently at the Larsen & Toubro shipyard in India for maintenance, before heading into the Pacific.
I don’t understand the idea either. There is site called Navy Lookout and their last but one article discusses these ‘groups’. Towards the end of the comments some plucky soul tries to point out they are simply not big enough and are under armed. But he was promptly shut down by one of the many experts on the site. The latter is a problem with the site.
The whole idea is a wast of bunker fuel. It would be better if the ships and personnel mounted mini-exercises in Norway.
In the great Walter Hill b-movie “Extreme Prejudice,” a sarcastic individual in jail in a rural West Texas county looks around at the small gun rack and the deputies doing paperwork and says, “If a cowboy gets drunk, these boys are ready.”
Similarly, the Royal Navy’s Littoral Response Group is fully capable of handling a drug smuggler’s boat or some small-time pirates, but not much more.
Heck, I used to think the Perry-class frigate I was on was lightly-armed, with 1 or 2 SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopters onboard, SM-1s and Harpoons for the Mk13 single-rail missile launcher on the forecastle, some Mk46 torpedoes, the 76mm and a 20mm CIWS (“R2D2”) on the O-1 level and–when we deployed to 7th Fleet–four M2s at the corners of the superstructure. We also had some M-60s and various small arms (M-14s, M-79s, Mossberg 500s and 1911s) in the armory.
In contrast, the LRG looks like a cop with nothing but a baton patrolling a notoriously bad neighborhood. I hope their assumptions about what they might run into are never seriously tested.