47: Cold War & 1990s Submarines & the Hybrid Navy

In this episode host Iain Ballantyne talks to guest Steve Kershaw, a former Royal Navy submarine officer, about his amazing career under the sea and his work today helping to bring about the UK’S ‘Hybrid Navy’ transformation.

Iain kicks off by asking Steve to explain what led him to choose a naval career in the mid-1980s and why it was the engineering side of the Senior Service that appealed most.

After talking about his time undergoing Initial Sea Training and being ‘streamed’ to the Submarine Service as an engineer, Steve relates how for a short period he returned to the Surface Fleet. He spent time in HMS London, including a foray to Berlin as the infamous Wall dividing East and West came down in late 1989.

Steve served in several Royal Navy nuclear-powered hunter killer submarines (SSNs) of the Trafalgar Class, including during the 1991 Gulf War. That boat spent 13 weeks dived in the Mediterranean watching Libya to ensure it did not come into the conflict on the side of Saddam Hussein.

Steve also went to sea in the Upholder Class diesel-electric submarine HMS Unicorn for a marathon voyage from the UK to the Indian Ocean and Gulf and back. He reveals to Iain how he found the ‘dirty boat’ world aboard Unicorn to be somewhat different to the nukes.

While away the UK Government decided to take the four (fairly new) Upholders out of commission, which was a blow. Steve reveals the impact that had on Unicorn’s crew.

A deployment involving Steve, which hit the headlines for the wrong reasons was that of HMS Tireless as part of Naval Task Group 2000, and which saw a circumnavigation of the world cancelled. The SSN was ‘trapped’ in Gibraltar for a year due to serious technical problems and Steve returned home rather than going around the world.

Among other things Iain and Steve discuss is his time with Naval Sea Trials Party 30 (NSTP 30) and its work to ensure RN submarine sensors remained on the cutting edge during a continuing contest under the sea.

Steve and Iain also discuss how the ‘Hybrid Navy’ aims to provide a solution to giving the British fleet of today and tomorrow more mass and presence at sea as part of the new Atlantic Bastion concept.

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• Steve Kershaw served 21 years in the UK submarine service and has spent the rest of his career consulting in Defence and Security. He has been at PwC for over 15 years and a partner for 11 of them. His primary role is to lead consulting teams working in the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). He is also PwC’s Global Security and Defence Sector leader, helping individual territories and multi-national accounts such as NATO to develop and utilise the best that PwC has to offer. He specialises in improving military programmes and procurements and also enterprise-wide transformation.

•Iain Ballantyne is the founding and current Editor of ‘Warships IFR’ magazine (first published in 1998) along with its ‘Guide to the Royal Navy’ (since 2003) and ‘Guide to the US Navy’ (since 2018). Iain is also author of the books ‘Hunter Killers’ (Orion) and ‘The Deadly Trade’ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), both about submarine warfare, plus ‘Arnhem: Ten Days in The Cauldron’ and ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’ (both published by Canelo). In 2017 Iain was awarded a Fellowship by the British Maritime Foundation, which promotes awareness of the United Kingdom’s dependence on the sea and seafarers. Visit his web site Bismarckbattle.com and follow him on X @IBallantyn