Britain’s High North Gap: Frigates, Submarines and Command

The House of Commons Defence Committee has published “Defence in the High North” (HC 71), and its conclusion is blunt. Britain is now responsible for leading NATO’s northern flank, but it does not have the ships and submarines that job requires. The committee also argues that the government has knowingly made one of the shortfalls worse by selling frigates to Norway.

The Frigate Line

The Royal Navy needs eight of its thirteen frigates to carry the Sonar 2087 towed array, the main sensor for hunting submarines. The committee report assumes that two Type 26 frigates being built for the Royal Navy will go to Norway, which has ordered at least five Type 26s for £10 billion. The government says that deal will sustain 4,000 UK jobs. Norway wants its first ship in service by 2029–30. On that basis, the report says, towed-array frigate numbers “could remain as low as five vessels for the next three years,” and the Royal Navy will not reach eight until 2037. “In this case the government seems to have taken a conscious decision to prioritise defence exports over sovereign capability.”

According to UK Defence Journal, a chart published with the report shows the combined Type 23 and Type 26 line falling to two ships in 2031 before recovering. HMS Richmond and HMS Iron Duke were both decommissioned in mid-2026. The committee still treats the Norway deal as strategically more significant than a normal export: a shared British–Norwegian class of anti-submarine frigates “should improve NATO’s ability to detect and track Russian submarines” moving into the North Atlantic. It asks the government to show how naval exports will support deterrence in the High North without undermining the Royal Navy’s own capabilities.

Submarines and the Rearmament Table

The report cites “an internal document apparently drawn up by NATO” that ranks Britain 31st of 32 allies on meeting its rearmament promises. Only Iceland, which has no military, ranks lower. Ed Arnold of RUSI told the committee that the only way to move up is “through cash,” because the ranking comes down to fleet availability and readiness.

On submarines, the committee cites “several media sources” reporting that all five Astute-class attack submarines were recently in dockyards at the same time, with none deployed. Retired Rear Admiral Philip Mathias, a former MOD Director of Nuclear Policy, said in December 2025 that Vanguard-class deterrent patrols, which lasted about 70 days during the Cold War, now run to more than 200. He also spoke of “a shockingly low availability” of submarines to counter Russia in the High North. The committee wants the government to brief it on how quickly some Astutes can regain the ability to operate under the ice.

Command Questions

Britain has taken over leadership of NATO’s Joint Force Command Norfolk and also leads the ten-nation Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). The report recommends that, within a year of taking over at Norfolk, the government reassess what the JEF adds to European security. Either it should strengthen the JEF and align it more closely with NATO, or it should put its limited resources into NATO instead. The committee also suggests the JEF could focus more on the High North. If it does, it says, Britain may need to reassure the Baltic states, for example by building up its force in Estonia to brigade size. The government is expected to respond within two months.

Why It Matters

This analysis is ours, not the committee’s.

The Norway choice is the kind of trade-off a smaller navy cannot avoid: keeping a shipyard busy and building an ally’s fleet now, while accepting a thinner British line for the rest of the decade. The committee’s own framing points to the way out. If British and Norwegian Type 26s are run as one anti-submarine force, with shared training, sustainment, data and command, the frigate count matters less than how the combined force operates. That depends on Norfolk acting as a working command node rather than simply a NATO title.

The submarine numbers are the harder problem. Patrols of more than 200 days and an attack-submarine fleet tied up alongside are signs of a force being run beyond its capacity.

That is the case for adding persistent uncrewed sensing in the Norwegian Sea and the GIUK gap. It cannot replace crewed hulls, but it could reduce the hours those hulls spend on routine watching.