I. From the Deck Plates: Where This Story Starts

In the summer of 2013, I was the Supply & Transport Officer (Naval), STO(N), onboard RFA Fort Victoria, operating in the Gulf of Bahrain. I would later transfer to the same position on RFA Fort Austin, effectively becoming the last STO(N) in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. My department of around 19 civilian Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) personnel was responsible for managing approximately 5,000 line items of second-line stockholdings, operating the ship’s explosive safety management system, and conducting Replenishment at Sea (RAS) operations that kept the Fleet supplied with ammunition, general stores and everything in between.

We were a DE&S organisation embedded in an RFA hull. That distinction mattered more than anyone ashore seemed to appreciate. Our competences, Weapons, Ordnance, Munitions and Explosives (WOME) National Occupational Standards (NOS) gained through years of service across Defence Munitions depots, underpinned the explosive safety regime for every Solid Support Ship (SSS) in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. We operated across three overlapping regulatory domains: JSP 482 (depots and naval bases), JSP 862 (afloat), and JSP 800(4b) (dangerous goods transport). No other department in the RFA straddled all three.

When the consultation document arrived proposing to integrate STO(N) functions into core RFA sea-going business, we did what any competent safety organisation should do. We put the risks on paper. We documented the competence gaps. We identified the regulatory exposures. We proposed mitigations. Every concern was formally recorded, copied to the chain of command, and filed.

This article publishes those warnings for the first time and tracks what happened next.

II. The Integration Proposal: What Was on the Table

In May 2013, Captain John Hood, DACOS RFA Personnel, issued a National Consultation document titled “Future Solid Support Delivery in RFA Ships.” It presented three options for the future of STO(N) manning on the Fort Rosalie-class and Fort Victoria.

Option 1 maintained the existing civil service STO(N) manning structure. Option 2 proposed a hybrid model retaining key civilian WOME posts while transferring routine functions to RFA personnel. Option 3, the preferred option, proposed full integration, removing STO(N) civilian posts entirely and absorbing all functions into the RFA.

The consultation cited three drivers: an unreliable volunteer pipeline from DE&S depots, the need for personnel flexibility, and the desire for sustainable Terms and Conditions of Service (TACOS) for sea-going staff. On the surface, these were reasonable. But the document that built the case contained fundamental errors.

The Data Problem

The consultation stated that 50 STO(N) personnel were required under the current manning Statement of Complement (SOC). The actual figure across three readiness states (Base, Normal and High) was 37, verified against Magellan billets showing 19 per ship at High readiness. That overstated baseline of 13 posts fed directly into the financial case for integration, inflating the apparent saving.

The manning tables published in the consultation were wrong on multiple counts. They did not distinguish between the Planner Admin (STON D) and the Principal Technical Officer (PTO): two distinct posts with different competence profiles. They omitted the Fitter SZ3 post entirely. They showed no manning allocation for the DM Crombie depot phase or the refit yard, both of which required 3–6 months of WOME-competent work to prepare or offload a vessel’s stockholding.

The recruitment narrative was equally misleading. The consultation described a volunteer system in terminal decline. The STO(N) team’s rebuttal pointed out that Naval Command Headquarters (NCHQ) had held responsibility for STO(N) recruitment since 2009, and by their own admission had been ineffective. Posts were not “automatically deleted” as claimed; that had happened once during an HRMS data-cleansing exercise. But the claim became self-fulfilling: staff heard their posts would disappear, and stopped volunteering.

III. The Competence Gap Nobody Wanted to Close

The STO(N) integration documents centred on a detailed mapping of the WOME NOS competences that would be lost. This was not an abstract workforce planning exercise. It was a safety case.

The WOME NOS framework, mandated by JSP 482 and 2009DIN01-017, breaks into functional competence areas assessed against specific Key Roles. The STO(N) department on Fort Victoria held competences across eight of these roles.

The distinction between holding a competence code and holding functional competence was a recurring theme. RFA Explosives Responsible Officers (EROs) receive one week of training under JSP 862. An ERO holding ESA TSPT 8.1A is trained to operate within authorised allowances: a bounded permission structure that tells them what they may do. Within the STO(N) department, the Deputy STO(N) (DSTO(N)) or Stores Officer Planning and Liaison (SOPL) holding the same code operates under the complete Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road (ADR) regulatory framework via JSP 800 and additionally holds the Government Authorised Explosives Representative (GAER) qualification. The GAER is not a training course. It is a legal authorisation permitting the holder to conduct port explosives safety assessments for vessels carrying Class 1 dangerous goods.

The practical consequence was binary. With GAER-qualified personnel embarked, an SSS operating under JSP 862 could enter any port worldwide. Without them, JSP 800(4b), the International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Code for Class 1 Explosives, would be invoked. That is the same regime that restricts Strategic Roll-on Roll-off ships at Marchwood Military Port. Applied globally, it would have constrained every ammunition-carrying RFA to the same movement and berthing restrictions as a commercial explosives carrier.

IV. The Package Examination Room: A Capability That Quietly Vanished

JSP 862 Part 1 Chapter 3 Paragraph 63 specified eight tasks that the Package Examination Room (PER) on each SSS was required to perform, including broken-seal examination, repacking of small arms ammunition, contamination certification, aircraft decoy preparation, fraction issues of boxed munitions, and temporary stowage for Extraordinary Embarkations of E3 munitions.

These are not optional. They are mandated functions for a vessel that carries and distributes ammunition to the Fleet. PER management requires WOME NOS 4 and 5: Manufacture and Maintenance competences drawn from Defence Munitions Depot production areas, supported by Munitions Engineering Control Procedure (MECP) 20 (the Munitions Engineering Processing Risk Management System, MEPRMS).

The integration documents recorded an uncomfortable truth: even before integration, the STO(N) department had not carried competent staff or supporting equipment for full PER operations for some time. The PERs had not been maintained to the correct standard. The requirement had been quietly removed years earlier without the regulation being amended.

Integration did not create this problem. But it made closing the gap impossible. There was no RFA post with NOS 4 or 5. There was no plan to acquire it. The PER capability simply ceased to exist, and the regulation that mandated it remained on the books.

V. What We Recommended, and What Happened

The June 2013 STO(N) Integration document made three formal recommendations.

First: ring-fence the current safety management structure within STO(N) departments until the new safety system had been approved and implemented into the supporting documentation and JSPs. Do not remove the competences before the replacement framework is in place.

Second: use the qualified instructors within STO(N), personnel who held WOME NOS 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 13, to train and certify the competence of the RFA staff taking over. Transfer the knowledge before removing the people.

Third: ensure that DE&S JSC SCM-SCO-MatAcctg1 (responsible for JSP 886 STO(N) accounting) and Defence Munitions had been formally consulted on the safety and accounting implications.

There is no open-source evidence that these recommendations were implemented as proposed. The integration proceeded. STO(N) civilian posts were progressively removed. The JSPs were not updated to reflect the changed responsibilities. The competences were not transferred at the scale or depth required.

VI. The Account Closure: A Quiet End to a DE&S Capability

On 15 August 2013, I wrote to Captain Rupert Drew, DACOS Ops Support, seeking direction on the DE&S STO(N) account (UIN N5197C) ahead of Fort Victoria’s return to the UK for de-store. I asked five specific questions about account closure, custodianship continuity, Receipt Storage Maintenance and Issue (RSMI) arrangements, UIN changes, and Defence Munitions consultation regarding MECP 032 (Maintenance of Replenishment at Sea Equipment).

Captain Drew’s response was clear. Close the account once stock balances reached zero, stocktaking completed, outstanding dues cancelled and discrepancies resolved. No interim administration required before the ship restored. The UIN would remain but retitle from “STO(N) Account” to “Solid Support Team.” The Logistics Supply Officer (LSO) would assume the role of Solid Support Officer (SSO). A277 gear would continue to be supported by DM Crombie. All stock should return to the supply chain.

The direction was procedurally correct under JSP 886. But it marked the formal end of the DE&S second-line depot capability that had been the backbone of solid support for decades. The high-value stock profile, already described in my correspondence as part of an ever-decreasing DE&S asset base, was dissolved back into the supply chain. The competences that had managed it were not replaced.

VII. 2017–2026: The Consequences Arrive

The decade that followed played out exactly as the STO(N) integration documents had predicted, though on a larger scale than anyone anticipated.

RFA Fort Austin and RFA Fort Rosalie, the two Fort Rosalie-class solid support ships that had been the primary STO(N) platforms, were progressively run down and withdrawn from service on 31 March 2021. Both were sold to Egypt, the first sale of Royal Navy vessels to that country in over 30 years. With their departure, the UK’s solid support capability reduced to a single hull: Fort Victoria.

Fort Victoria, by then the only ship capable of providing dry stores replenishment to a Carrier Strike Group (CSG), entered refit at Cammell Laird. By early 2024 she was reported in poor condition. In late 2024, she was placed in extended readiness (uncrewed reserve) for at least a year.

The operational consequence arrived in 2025. When the UK assembled Carrier Strike Group 25 for deployment to the Indo-Pacific, it did so without a national solid support ship. For the first time in modern Royal Navy history, the CSG would be wholly reliant on a foreign vessel, the Norwegian HNoMS Maud, for solid stores replenishment.

The broader RFA manning crisis provided the backdrop. The force shrank from approximately 2,300 personnel in December 2010 to 1,750 by May 2023, a decline of roughly a quarter on the official figures, with reported strength near 1,600 by late 2024. Skilled positions were understaffed by 30–50%. RFA officers calculated a 30% cut in purchasing power since 2010 relative to commercial maritime peers. Officers took strike action for the first time in the service’s history on 15 August 2024, and a joint Nautilus International and RMT stoppage followed on 3 September 2024, over pay and conditions.

VIII. The Continuity Problem: Why a Rotational Crew Cannot Hold the Competence

There is a structural reason the competence could not simply transfer, and it has nothing to do with the ability of individual RFA personnel. It is about continuity of tenure measured against the length of the evolution being managed.

Managing an operational ammunition load is not a discrete task. It is a multi-year evolution with a single thread of ownership running through it. The STO(N) department ordered the operational load, planned the loading configuration, and had that configuration formally approved. The same team then loaded the stock at the depot, maintained it at sea along with the Replenishment at Sea (RAS) equipment and the specialised mechanical handling and transport plant, and, when the ship returned from deployment, offloaded the entire operational stockholding and returned it to the United Kingdom depots. Responsibility and ownership were continuous from first demand to final return. Competence was maintained because the same people saw the whole cycle, and saw it repeatedly.

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary crewing model breaks that thread. RFA sea tours run to four or six months, not years. It is therefore impossible for a single planning officer to train through, or carry responsibility for, the full multi-year load evolution. The planner who orders and configures a load will have rotated ashore long before that load is maintained through deployment and offloaded. In practice the RFA planning officer plans for a relief, who plans for a relief, who plans for a relief. Ownership is handed along a chain of short-tour post-holders, and the deep competence that comes from owning a complete cycle never accumulates in any one of them.

The problem compounds when those personnel move between platforms. A competent individual posted from one solid support vessel to a different supply ship carries their hard-won familiarity away with them, and the Afloat Support competence on the vessel they have left is lost within a single posting cycle. Spread across a small force, the specialism does not pool: it dissipates. The consequence reaches the certification authority. Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST), which certifies that a ship is safe and ready to operate, has no established cadre of Afloat Support specialists to assess the capability against. A capability that cannot be consistently manned cannot be consistently certified, and so it sits, in practice, as an unproven and uncertified capability.

This is why an Explosives Responsible Officer (ERO) course bolted onto the RFA training pipeline was never going to close the gap. The gap is not a missing qualification. It is a missing career structure: one that keeps the same people inside the explosive safety evolution long enough to own it, and recycles them through the shore establishments where the competence is generated.

The logical answer points in a single direction. Afloat Support should be integrated into the Royal Navy staffing and training system, with personnel rotating from Royal Naval Armament Depot (RNAD) shore appointments to operational platforms and back. A specialist following that path would build and hold air station, carrier and Afloat Support competences across a career, rather than acquiring a fragment of one for the duration of a single short tour. That is the structure that sustained the competence when it existed, and it is the structure the Fleet Solid Support (FSS) ships will need if the capability is to be rebuilt rather than merely re-described.

IX. Fleet Solid Support: The Unanswered Question

The Fleet Solid Support (FSS) programme, which will deliver three replacement ships to the RFA, passed its Critical Design Review in late 2025. Steel was cut on the first ship, RFA Resurgent, at Appledore in December 2025. All three vessels are expected to be operational by 2032.

Each FSS ship will have a core RFA crew of 101 plus up to 57 augmentees. The ships will carry 9,000 cubic metres of ammunition, spares, food and general stores. Unlike the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, FSS will not feature the Highly Mechanised Weapon Handling Systems. Stores movement will use conventional Material Handling Equipment (MHE) and lifts.

The design is sound. The programme is progressing. But the question the STO(N) integration documents asked in 2013 remains unanswered in 2026: who will crew these ships with the WOME competences required to manage embarked ammunition safely across the full spectrum of today’s framework: DSA 03.OME (the successor to JSP 482), the still-extant JSP 862, and the DSA03 DLSR and Dangerous Goods Manual regime that replaced JSP 800(4b)?

The GAER qualification pipeline ran through Defence Munitions. The PER competences came from DM Depot production areas. The explosive safety management experience was built through years of cross-posting between depots, naval bases and afloat service. That entire ecosystem has been dismantled. If FSS is to restore the solid support capability that was lost, the competence framework must be rebuilt from first principles, not merely by adding an ERO course to the RFA training programme.

X. Regulatory Status: More Fragmented, Not Less

A note on the current regulatory landscape, because it reinforces the competence argument rather than weakening it.

JSP 862, the MOD Maritime Explosives Regulations (MMER), has not been replaced by a single successor document. Part 1 (Surface Ships) and Part 2 (Submarines, Issue 5 dated July 2015) remain operative under the Defence Maritime Regulator (DMR) and Naval Authority Explosives (NAExp). They are not published on GOV.UK (many JSPs are internal/portal-only) but are cited as extant in DSA and Defence Ordnance Munitions and Explosives Safety Regulator (DOSR) documentation as recently as 2019–2020.

The broader framework has, if anything, become more complex since 2013. JSP 482 was withdrawn on 18 June 2020 and replaced by DSA 03.OME Part 2 (In-Service and Operational Safety Management of OME), the regulation that now governs the storage, processing, licensing and quantity-distance requirements the STO(N) once worked to. Many individual chapters still carry the ‘(JSP 482)’ label, and the current edition is no longer published openly: it is obtained on request from the Defence Ordnance, Munitions and Explosives Safety Regulator (DOSR). Its companion, DSA 03.OME Part 1 (formerly JSP 520), covers acquisition and safety cases, with both parts sitting under the overarching DSA 02.OME regulations and directive. DSA 03.OME cross-references JSP 862 for maritime-specific requirements. JSP 430 (Ship Safety Management) has been partially superseded by DSA03.DMR (Defence Maritime Regulations). The dangerous-goods transport domain has moved as well: JSP 800 Volume 4B has been superseded, its content reorganised into DSA03 DLSR (Movement and Transport Safety Regulations) and the Dangerous Goods Manual (DGM). The result is a layered structure where maritime explosive safety now sits across DSA 03.OME, DSA03.DMR, the surviving JSP 862, and the DSA03 DLSR/DGM regime that replaced JSP 800(4b) for transport.

For the competence question, this fragmentation matters. The STO(N) department operated across JSP 482, JSP 862 and JSP 800(4b) simultaneously because the physical reality of managing explosives on an SSS required it: at sea under one regime, in port under another, in transit under a third. The regulatory landscape has not been simplified. The personnel who understood the interfaces between these frameworks have gone. Whoever crews the FSS ships will need to navigate a regulatory environment that is, on paper, more complex than the one the STO(N) was trained for.

XI. Lessons for Defence Capability Management

The STO(N) integration story is not unique to the RFA. It follows a pattern repeated across defence: a niche competence held by a small cadre of specialists is identified as an efficiency target; the business case is built on financial savings; the competence framework that underpins safety is not transferred before the people are removed; the JSPs are not updated; and the operational consequence arrives years later, long after the decision-makers have moved on.

What made STO(N) unusual was the quality of the documentary record. The warnings were not verbal. They were not informal. They were typed, signed, filed and copied to the chain of command. They identified specific regulations, specific competence codes, specific operational restrictions and specific individuals who should have been consulted. They proposed specific mitigations.

Twelve years later, those documents read like a prediction. The competence gap was not closed. The PER capability was not restored. The berthing restrictions were not addressed. The JSPs were not updated. The platforms were sold. And the Fleet went to sea without a solid support ship.

For the FSS programme, and for anyone responsible for crewing these new ships, the 2013 STO(N) integration documents are not historical curiosities. They are a requirements specification for a competence framework that will need to exist before the first ammunition pallet crosses the gangway of RFA Resurgent.

ISC Commentary

This analysis is unusual in that the evidence base is the author’s own filing cabinet. The 2013 integration documents were written as a safety case, not a protest, and that is why they still matter: they specify, role by role and regulation by regulation, the competence a solid support ship must carry to operate lawfully and safely. Nothing published in the twelve years since has answered them.

The pattern is not unique to the RFA. A small cadre holds a niche competence; the business case counts the posts but not the knowledge; the framework is dismantled before its replacement exists; and the bill arrives a decade later. The Fleet sailed east in 2025 behind a Norwegian auxiliary because of decisions minuted in 2013.

With RFA Resurgent now in build at Appledore, Belfast and Cádiz, the question has a deadline. ISC’s companion analysis, Building RFA Resurgent: the question STO(N) asked in 2013, sets out three actions before the first ammunition pallet crosses her gangway: a published afloat competence framework answering this record point by point, an explosives specialisation in the RFA logistics branch with a restored GAER pipeline, and a crewing plan published beside the build schedule.