Royal Navy sailors responsible for tracking Russian warships set to go on strike

Alice Tomlinson
Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:38:45 +0000

Royal Navy sailors who are responsible for tracking Russian warships are set to go on strike next week in a long-running dispute over pay.

Personnel from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA), the civilian support arm of the Royal Navy, will stage industrial action on Thursday after rejecting a 4.5 per cent pay offer from the Ministry of Defence.

The RMT union, which represents the workers, said its members had seen their wages fall by around 30 per cent in real terms over the past decade.

Civilian sailors work shifts of up to 12 hours a day in some of the most demanding conditions at sea.

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Eddie Dempsey, the RMT's general secretary, said the MoD needed to come forward with a serious long-term commitment to improving pay and conditions if it wanted to retain staff.

He said: "Our members play a vital role in supporting the Navy, often in some of the most demanding and dangerous working conditions. But they have faced years of below-par pay and unresolved concerns about conditions."

Mr Dempsey warned that workers would not accept what he described as a substandard offer and were prepared to take further action if necessary, the Telegraph reports.

He also called on the MoD to ensure it was complying with national minimum wage legislation as part of any future settlement.

The timing of the walkout raises questions about Britain's ability to monitor Russian naval activity in the Channel should Vladimir Putin dispatch further vessels through British waters while the strike is ongoing.

As the Royal Navy has shrunk to its smallest size in living memory, the RFA’s role has grown considerably in recent years.

Britain now operates just seven frigates, most of which are currently in port undergoing maintenance.

Where once a Type 23 frigate would have been deployed to shadow Moscow's warships through British waters, the task has increasingly fallen to civilian RFA vessels.

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It emerged this week that RFA Tideforce, a 39,000-ton tanker crewed by civilian sailors, had been deployed to track the Admiral Grigorovich, a heavily armed Russian frigate from the Black Sea Fleet, through the English Channel, rather than a Royal Navy warship.

Following the Russian frigate were two sanctioned shadow fleet tankers, which are used by Putin to fund his war in Ukraine.

The fleet tankers illegally export oil in defiance of sanctions imposed by the UK, the European Union and the United States.

Confirming it had been involved in a ten-day operation to track multiple Russian vessels around the UK, the Navy deployed frigates HMS Somerset and HMS St Albans, patrol ship HMS Mersey and a Wildcat helicopter from 815 Naval Air Squadron at various points between March 29 and April 7.

Among the vessels monitored were a surfaced Russian submarine, a Ropucha-class landing ship and a Kilo-class submarine, with HMS Mersey scrambled three times during the operation.

Defence Secretary John Healey also disclosed this week that Russia had conducted a covert submarine operation in British waters targeting vital energy and data cables.

The RFA's growing workload comes as the wider Armed Forces face intense scrutiny over their capacity to respond to simultaneous global threats.

HMS Dragon, the UK's only deployable destroyer, was dispatched to the Middle East following the outbreak of the Iran war but took three weeks to arrive and has since had to return to port after developing water supply issues.

Meanwhile, only one of Britain's six Astute-class nuclear attack submarines has been deployed to Australia, with the remainder sitting in port at HMNB Clyde in Faslane.

The state of Britain's military has drawn scathing commentary from allies, with US President Donald Trump previously dismissing the country's two aircraft carriers as "toys" and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth mocking the "big, bad Royal Navy".

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson added his voice to the criticism this week, urging Sir Keir Starmer to board the sanctioned shadow fleet vessels passing through British waters and warning that inaction was allowing Putin to laugh at Britain.

He said: "I think it's pathetic. I don't know why we don't board these sanction-busting ships.

"They are fuelling Putin's war machine and funding his slaughter of innocent Ukrainians and we have a golden opportunity to stop it."

The RMT said despite the strike action, RFA members would continue to ensure the safety of vessels was maintained at all times.

GB News has contacted the MoD for comment.