Optimising the Royal Netherlands Navy for its Role within NATO

The purpose of this Whitehall Report is to examine how the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) can optimise its force structure to meet its obligations to NATO in an Article 5 scenario, in which the RNLN will be an important contributor to allied naval plans, particularly in the context of Regional Plan Northwest. The RNLN will need to balance optimising for this task with the requirement to maintain a balanced force that can also meet other commitments further afield. 

This will be an enduring consideration since the Russian threat to Europe is unlikely to abate in the short to medium term. In the maritime domain many of Russia’s key capabilities, such as its nuclear attack submarine (SSN) fleet, have been relatively unaffected by the war in Ukraine. The Russian naval threat will prove most acute on the Alliance’s northern flank, given that many of its most important naval assets are held by the Northern Fleet.

The character of the Russian threat in the north is likely to evolve in the next decade. Since in a war the Russian navy is intended to support army-led joint plans rather than playing an independent role, it is unlikely to represent an independent threat to NATO, with the exception of sub-threshold sabotage, in the very short term. However, it is likely that this will change before the end of this decade once the Russian army regenerates its capabilities. In an Article 5 scenario, the most important naval task for the Alliance on the northern flank remains containing Russia’s SSNs, a task which may increasingly have to be achieved near the Bear Island–Svalbard Gap in order to contain submarines equipped with long-range strike capabilities. This in turn places allied vessels at risk from the airborne assets of the northern fleet joint strategic command, such as the cruise missile-equipped TU-22M3/M3M, which an allied maritime component command will also need to play a role in containing. 

Russia’s cold weather-trained troops from both the Airborne Forces and the 80th and 200th brigades have suffered heavy attrition in Ukraine and the time taken to train such troops suggest that in the next decade the requirement for amphibious reinforcement of the northern flank will be reduced. This challenge will likely re-emerge by the 2030s, however. In effect, the Russian threat in the north will initially be a two-dimensional threat based around submarines and air-launched cruise missiles, but will expand into a more full spectrum threat by the mid-2030s. For a navy optimising for the northern flank, the list of priorities is likely to initially narrow, with a particular focus on anti-submarine warfare (ASW), mine countermeasures (MCM) and anti-air warfare (AAW) before broadening in the medium term. 

The RNLN is likely to see a considerable growth in its capabilities over this period as the fleet expands and key parts of its force structure are recapitalised. While the expansion of the fleet and reorganisation of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps (RNLMC) will allow the RNLN to be an important contributor to NATO’s maritime capabilities, particularly on the northern flank, there are short-term risks that must be overcome to reach this point. 

The requirement to maintain a balanced force means that the RNLN operates a number of vessel types with attendant complications for both manning and maintaining a diversity of vessel classes. 

The existence of a large number of vessel classes with, in some cases, limited numbers of vessels in each class creates a competition between maintaining a steady tempo of operations and retaining the slack capacity to ensure both readiness and the ability to maintain enough trained personnel in key roles to enable the eventual expansion of the fleet. This challenge will be felt most acutely by the RNLN’s ASW frigate force. That the fleet currently operates a limited force of two M-class frigates poses challenges both with respect to maintaining vessels at readiness and personnel management. The extensive demands of a limited number of vessels means that the capacity to train personnel in key areas (for example, sonar operators and controllers) is limited and much of the activity undertaken by these vessels is not ASW-relevant. This poses a risk, given the requirement to maintain enough qualified individuals to eventually double the ASW frigate force, which will require more crews than ships in the short term. There is a possibility that, if unaddressed, this will result in key competencies both on vessels and in training establishments dying out before the force expands. A similar requirement for additional personnel in excess of current manning requirements will be needed to realise plans to grow the fleet’s submarine force. 

In the short term, the centrality of submarines to the Russian naval threat creates incentives to prioritise the readiness of ASW capabilities and the capacity to train personnel for them, even if this comes at the cost of balance and the capacity to maintain deployments at sea. For example, the M-class frigate could be ringfenced for ASW-relevant activity and used on shorter deployment cycles, even if this created gaps in the RNLN’s ability to maintain vessels on deployment in the short term. Failing this, technologies which enable at-sea training comparable to those incorporated on the US Navy’s AN/SQQ-89 combat system might allow perishable skills to be maintained, despite the tempo of operations. 

While the RNLN could well see its pool of available personnel grow and has robust plans in place to achieve this, there is a requirement to hedge against this not occurring given the requirement for excess capacity to set the conditions for growth in key areas. The fleet’s offshore patrol vessels represent a capability that might be sacrificed to provide headroom. In extremis, this might also extend to its landing platform docks as the requirement for amphibious reinforcement will subside in the short term and by the time Russia’s cold weather-trained troops have been regenerated the new amphibious vessels, which will support the RNLMC’s revised CONOPS, will have been delivered. 

In the individual major areas of naval warfare (ASW, AAW, littoral warfare, mine countermeasures and strike), the RNLN’s planned capabilities largely meet the requirements of the emerging operating environment and adaptations that need to be made are of a relatively incremental nature. 

In some cases, this involves conceptual focus. This is especially true of the RNLMC’s planned CONOPS, which would benefit from a specific focus on and optimisation against adversary medium-range SAM systems as a subset of the elusive high-value targets that the RNLMC is planning to be able to engage. 

In other instances this involves capability generation. An example is the requirement for an anti-submarine rocket to better leverage standoff ASW concepts and mitigate the risk to frigates using LFA (which are currently outranged by the submarines they might hunt). Similarly, a small number of longer-ranged air-defence interceptors, such as the SM-6, which could allow air-defence frigates to better contribute to a defensive counter-air mission against cruise missile-equipped aircraft likely represents a more viable way to offset the air and missile threat than attempting to generate an unaffordable level of magazine depth. 

In specific areas, however, magazine depth and capacity will be of considerable importance. This will be especially true with respect to long-range strike, given the likely need to prioritise the employment of systems such as Tomahawk for the most operationally significant targets. Shorter-ranged and more expendable strike capabilities will be required, particularly for operations in the littoral. 

The potential reliance of parts of the force on the same enablers for their CONOPS is a potential challenge to be surmounted. For example, the Joint Support Ship would be required for both support to littoral operations and theatre ASW. Since the RNLN will operate in an allied construct this is not insurmountable but requires peacetime agreement and preparation to rely on allied platforms for some tasks. 

Plans to leverage uncrewed or optionally crewed systems for tasks such as MCM and ASW, as well as the provision of additional capacity to the fleet through optionally crewed vessels, can add considerable value. In the case of MCM, capabilities being developed for use against mines can also support tasks such as protecting infrastructure in the North Sea. However, limitations with respect to the power and endurance on uncrewed systems should be considered when selecting functions and payloads, particularly for uncrewed surface vessels employed in an ASW role, which would be most efficient teamed with LFA-equipped frigates if they employed passive sensors. For some capabilities, such as the optionally crewed multifunctional support ship, the requirement for power and endurance may also provide incentives for the eventual adoption of larger variants of the platform for the next vessels in the series.