Originally Posted by
Asturias56
"the Department to meet its operational requirement to have five ships at sea at any one time. This requirement remains unchanged despite the cut in numbers to six. The Department cannot commit to always maintaining this level of availability. It told the Committee that it will be able to maintain four ships at sea, and while there is very high probability of maintaining five, there is a small risk it will not."
Well that was wrong on all counts - that's the problem with any risk based analysis - small chances can still occur but if you have enough units it's not critical. It's when the outliers happen and you have no depth that you are stuffed
Particularly when you read the original - which says
destroyers available for tasking (readiness not specified) at any one time. I suspect there's some misinterpretation by the Ctte there. Certainly, expecting to get 5 high readiness ships from a force of 6 is simple fantasy. Even eight would be a struggle.
But that all reflects the mantra of the time - "Do more, with less, because we tell you to...."