Originally Posted by
Asturias56
"What - precisely - do we need them to patrol and against what threat?"
Well there's Illegal immigration, fishing, disaster relief and drugs enforcement and it might be nice to have a force big enough that we don't have to use RFA's and tankers to handle such issues .
Illegal immigration and fishery patrol are properly constabulary tasks - for which we have a Border Force - although DEFRA/MAFF/(inert current name here) has contracted out fishery patrol to the RN. It's not as if we need more there in any case, not least because the illegal immigration bit ends up being a taxi service, rather than preventative.
Disaster relief doesn't usually occur in the UK (unless you count Yorkshire). We have a patrol ship based in the Caribbean for distex and DEO. Trouble with patrol vessels is that they tend to be small and most importantly have a limited complement, which funnily enough limits what they can actually provide. Which is why in hurricane season (like what it is now) we tend to have a larger ship (often known as an RFA tanker) on station to help out. You seem to be suggesting that we should have a dedicated disaster relief ship purely for that. Or are you suggesting that we have load of patrol vessels to do "stuff"?