ORAC has posted this link on another thread it includes:-
https://thinpinstripedline.********....oughts-on.html
The other problem is that the military are very good at proposing short term measures to solve tactical problems that will have strategic consequences. For example the decision in 2010 to pay off the RFA FORT GEORGE was a means of saving a tiny amount of money in year to avoid a refit. This was a good way of saving money in the short term and based on the assumption that the remaining 3 ships would cope until the Future Solid Support ship entered service, probably later that decade. The problem is that this tactical measure failed because repeated tactical measures later seem to have proposed slipping the ordering of the FSS to solve in year pressures. That the FSS was only finally ordered in late 2022, the best part of a decade after this should have happened means that right now the Royal Navy finds itself with only one ancient support ship (RFA FORT VICTORIA) to cover both carriers. As the outstandingly good ‘Save The Royal Navy’ website has pointed out in painful detail, the ‘Fort Vic’ is in very poor materiel state and may be paid off too, leaving the RN without any stores support for its carrier strike groups. The same carrier strike groups that the Prime Minister has just committed to deploying to Japan in 2025…