Trump mocked Starmer and Royal Navy’s ‘old’ warships. But the truth is much totally different

US President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have launched scathing critiques of the UK’s naval capabilities, remarks that have undoubtedly resonated in a nation with a storied maritime heritage.

While sharp, their observations are not entirely without foundation.

The current friction between Washington and London intensified following the outbreak of the Iran war on 28 February, when Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially denied the US military access to British bases.

Although this decision was later partially reversed, allowing the US to utilise facilities like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean for “defensive purposes”, President Trump remains adamant he was let down.

He has repeatedly lambasted Starmer and dismissed the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers as mere “toys.”

In comments published by the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, Mr Trump said: “You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work.”

Mr Hegseth, meanwhile, offered a sarcastic suggestion that the “big, bad Royal Navy” should take responsibility for securing commercial shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.

While it is true that the Royal Navy no longer commands the global dominance it once did, it is far from the “feeble” force implied by Mr Trump and Mr Hegseth. Its capabilities are broadly comparable to those of the French navy, with which it is often benchmarked.

“On the negative side, there is a grain of truth, with the Royal Navy being smaller than it has been in hundreds of years,” said professor Kevin Rowlands, editor of the Royal United Services Institute Journal.

“On the positive side, the Royal Navy would say that it’s entering its first period of growth since World War II, with more ships set to be built than in decades.”

It’s not that long ago that Britain could muster a task force of 127 ships, including two aircraft carriers, to sail to the south Atlantic after Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands.

That 1982 campaign, which then-US President Ronald Reagan was lukewarm about, marked the final hurrah of Britain’s naval pedigree.

Nothing on that scale, or even remotely, could be accomplished now. Since World War II, Britain’s combat-ready fleet has declined substantially, much of it linked to changing military and technological advances and the end of empire. But not all.

The number of combat vessels in the Royal Navy fleet, including aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates, has fallen by two-thirds from 466 in 1975 to 66 in 2025, according to The Associated Press’ analysis of figures from the Ministry of Defense and the House of Commons Library.

Though the Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers at its command, there was a seven-year period in the 2010s when it had none.

And the number of destroyers has halved to six while the frigate fleet has been slashed from 60 to just 11.

The Royal Navy faced criticism for the time it took to send the HMS Dragon destroyer to the Middle East after the war with Iran broke out.

Though naval officials worked night and day to get it shipshape for a different mission than the one it was readying for, to many it symbolised the extent to which Britain’s military has been gutted since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

For much of the Cold War, Britain was spending between 4 per cent and 8 per cent of its annual national income on its military. After the Cold War, that proportion steadily dropped to a low of 1.9 per cent of GDP in 2018, fuel to Trump’s fire.

Like other countries, Britain, largely under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, sought to use the so-called “peace dividend” following the collapse of the Soviet Union to divert money earmarked for defence to other priorities, such as health and education.

And the austerity measures imposed by the Conservative-led government in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-9 prevented any pickup in defence spending despite the clear signs of a resurgent Russia, especially after its annexation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.

In the wake of Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and with another Middle East war underway, there’s a growing understanding across the political divide that the cuts have gone too far.

Following the Ukraine invasion, the Conservatives started to turn the military spending tide around. Since the Labour Party returned to power in 2024, Sir Keir is seeking to ramp up British defence spending, partly at the cost of cutting the country’s long-vaunted aid spending.

The prime minister has promised to raise UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2027, and the updated goal is now for it to rise to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035, as part of a Nato agreement pushed by Mr Trump.

That, in plain terms, will mean tens of billions pounds more being spent — a lot more kit for the armed forces.

The pressure is on for the government to speed that schedule up. But with the public finances further imperilled by the economic consequences of the Iran war, it’s not clear where any additional money will come.

The jibes will likely keep coming even though the critiques are unfair and far from the truth, said RUSI’s Rowlands, who was a captain in the Royal Navy.

“We are dealing with an administration that doesn’t do nuance,” he said.

Source: independent.co.uk