Originally Posted by
_Agrajag_
Look at where we've been over the last 40 years, FFS.
Falklands - ships (mostly civil and requisitioned , like Canberra) carried the people there who actually did the grunt work, and provided great air cover to help them do that. Took bloody enormous losses in the process.
GW 1 - UK ships did SFA.
GW 2 -UK ships did even less.
Afghanistan - UK ships did SFA
See a pattern here?
How about Ukraine? WTF could any UK ship do to help? Surprise, surprise, SFA yet again. They can't even get close as they are barred from entering the Black Sea.
What we've done to help Ukraine is provide recce from Rivet Joints flying every day over the Black Sea. We've also supplied Ukraine with kit and training, all of it so far land-focussed.
The shiny new grey funnel jobbies that we've spent so much on have been as much use a bicycle to a fish. Not saved a single life in Ukraine. We can't even give them a couple of ancient mine clearance ships to help with de-mining safe channels from their ports.
I get it, you're saying that because ships haven't been as relevant in recent UK operations as they were for the Falklands 40 years ago we should stop buying them. That's great, until we find ourselves embroiled in a Pacific war with China, and then what?
Rather than adding any clarification, you've basically just repeated the point you already made earlier in the thread which was a contradictory one - poor past planning failed to prepare us for the current land-based war in Ukraine, but also we should not plan for any future war that might not be land-based because ships are of no use for the current war in Ukraine.
Again, you can't have it both ways.