TWO Royal Navy (RN) warships passed the five-year milestone in their landmark mission to the Indo-Pacific region, recording 1,826 days since the two Batch 2 River-class offshore patrol vessels (OPV)–HMS Spey and HMS Tamar left their homeport of Portsmouth in September 2021.
Crewed by 50 personnel each, the Spey and Tamar have renewed the RN’s and United Kingdom’s presence in the Indo-Pacific as the first British warships operating around-the-clock in this key part of the world since the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. This also comes as the Tamar joins the US Pacific Command’s (PACOM) humanitarian mission Pacific Partnership in Malaysia not long after spending a week in Cambodia prior to that. Both ships had visited Cambodia over the past few years, becoming the first RN vessels to visit Cambodia in more than half a century. The Tamar was the first RN ship to dock in Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base which had been reportedly developed with the help of China.
Dubbed Operation Highwall, the mission of both ships entailed participation in major international naval exercises to providing disaster relief and humanitarian aid after disasters, helping regional navies and authorities police their waters to prevent smuggling, drug-trafficking or illegal fishing, and promoting military and economic ties with the UK. Additionally, the ships assisted in enforcing United Nations (UN) sanctions imposed on North Korea by patrolling, conducted freedom of navigation missions in disputed waters, exercising their rights under UN law to sail through international waters, sometimes individually, sometimes in company with regional allies.
According to the RN, the ships’ patrol area extends from the eastern seaboard of Africa to the west coast of the US but are typically found in Southeast Asia/Australasia and the western Pacific Rim, with each vessel generally operating independently. HMS Spey has taken part in 14 international military exercises since leaving Portsmouth, spending 15,259 hours at sea, amounting to 636 days and travelling 161,133 nautical miles in the process. The younger Tamar is not far behind, logging 159,000 nautical miles and 15,000 hours at sea. Collectively, the pair have sailed nearly 15 times around the world in the past five years.
The ships have undergone maintenance in allied ports and bases across the Asia-Pacific region, especially Singapore – where HMS Spey is currently undergoing routine maintenance – and Cairns in Australia. Crew changes take place every six or seven weeks with personnel flying out from the UK to trade places in order to maintain its demanding patrol schedules. Of the 125 places visited by Spey, among the more remote/obscure are: Tahiti, Vanuatu, Timor Leste, New Caledonia, and a string of island chains (Pitcairn, Solomon and Andaman).
The UK’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review described the deployment of both ships as a “permanent UK presence in the Indo-Pacific” as there is currently no dates for either ship to sail home. –-shp/adj/dl (Pix:RN)
