Originally Posted by ORAC
I can imagine the RN weren’t prepared to spend much on her….
IF it has been deliberately allowed to decay but deployed anyway to play SSBN acoustic chess then senior heads would need to roll. It may not be a boomer but it still has a kettle and a bunch of people on board.
Regarding the 'managed risk' - at a grand-strategic level the sudden unexplained loss of an attack boat whilst actively protecting a boomer's passage through home waters, with Russian attack boats in the vicinity, could be the prelude to a disaster. Loss of a single boat may not be the top-level risk.
As an aside, the series so far left many questions from those of us more familiar with aviation. If a boat has 2 of something essential you would presume the second is there for redundancy. When it came to the 2 scrubbers it appeared that the failure of one was enough to deny the crew a breathable atmosphere. Sounds odd to me.