On the same day that Nugee was giving evidence to the Defence Select Committee, Russia raised the flag on the first of two new nuclear-powered ice-breaker ships. Contact with disruptive ice-flows would cause significant damage to the glass fibre they are constructed with to allow sound to permeate through. Designed for stealth and to hunt submarines, Royal Navy ships feature sonar domes mounted on the bow. If possible, these renovations would come into conflict with one of the principal strengths of the UK naval services as a global anti-submarine navy. Distinct from ice-breakers, ice-strengthened ships can have a double hull with a pocket of air or water ballast, a thickened sea-level rim where the ice floats, and reinforcements around the bow and forward areas of the ship. Retrospectively hardening the hulls of the British fleet is a difficult prospect. “I think we should be doing the same,” continued Nugee, ”not of course the whole fleet-we do not need that-but enough of our fleet so that if we were required by our Government to have a presence during that period of the year, we would have the capability to do so and to not cede that to the Russians, for example, who will have that capability.” Ice-strengthening the fleet Nugee, now holding non-executive director position at private company Remit Zero and the MoD’s Defence Science Expert Committee, told the Defence and Climate Change hearing that he was aware Russia, China and Canada were already hardening hulls in preparation for traversing disruptive ice-flows, and gave his view that the UK should be capable of deploying vessels as early and as late in the calendar year as potential adversaries.

Malawi defence force warships