Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony for Russia's Navy Day in St Petersburg. (Photo: OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP via Getty Images)
![](https://unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/marydejevsky-100x100.jpg)
As the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the globe, there has been a lot of talk about the possible medical, economic and political fall-out, both for the immediate and for the more distant future. One aspect, however, has been less in evidence: implications for security and defence.
It is understandable that nations and alliances would want to minimise the harm and insist that, whatever happens, defence capability will be unimpaired — a part of defence, after all, is credibility. Even from published reports, however, it can be deduced that this is not quite true: there have been disruptions, some quite serious, to the plans and operations of many armed forces — and there may well be more to come.
Among the most vulnerable are maritime forces, which is logical, given that naval vessels share many characteristics with cruise ships, or “floating petri dishes” as they’ve been described. Crew live in close and often cramped quarters and use communal facilities for weeks on end.
An early alert was sounded in March, when the US Naval authorities faced a near-mutiny after the captain of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt went public with a warning that there were several hundred cases of coronavirus among the sailors on board and that there could be multiple deaths unless action was taken. The captain, Brett Crozier, was summarily dismissed, but has become something of a folk hero and could be reinstated following an ongoing inquiry. The aircraft carrier was evacuated and is docked at the US naval base in Guam. Of a crew of more than 4,000, more than 1,100 cases have been recorded.
The UK has taken precautions of its own. The new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth — one of two controversially commissioned by the Royal Navy — had to delay its first extensive sea trials for two weeks so that all the crew could be tested for coronavirus. It set sail from Portsmouth on 29 April, but only after securing the agreement of what were described as “senior leaders across Defence”, and its operations appear to have been adjusted, with the Navy saying that “as a further precaution” the carrier would “conduct a period of isolation at sea” before training begins, it would be operating in waters close to the UK coast, and the commanding officer had “the discretion to cease the training if it is deemed necessary”.
The French aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, is also smitten by the virus and currently quarantined at the port of Toulon, with a reported 600 cases. This means that of the 15 carriers (11 of them US) available to the Nato alliance, three are out of commission — 20% — and these are only the instances that have been reported.
Nor is it only navies that are affected. The UK is one of several countries that has not divulged the extent of the infection in the military, but there have been reports of unhappiness at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst with how social distancing and other precautions are, or are not, being observed. Sports and weekend leave have been cancelled, and suspected Coronavirus cases housed in separate accommodation.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI have heard suggestions that this C19 is an almost prefect weapon of mass destruction. It has taken a number of US aircraft carriers out of service. Much of Western economy is now vulnerable to hostile take over in the stock exchanges. It has degraded Western economies, yet the country where it came from seems to be carrying on un affected.
One may argue that is down to the Chinese state monitoring and their surveillance culture. But that doesn’t alter some basic facts.
If it was an accident, I can still imagine a lot of people are working out how they can advance China’s position in the world.
On the contrary, we are now seeing that the armed forces are much better at logistics – and therefore at protecting us than the NHS. It’s the latter that won’t survive this.