The key is being able to carry aircraft that are multirole.
Organic air defence is not a self licking lollipop if it allows your amphibious forces to get ashore, your seaborne logistics to survive (cf MV
Atlantic Conveyor), your MCM forces to clear mines, and your helicopters to operate freely. If it stops the enemy from defeating you then it was rather important.
Should be more concerned about the air threat ashore? Yes! Not just in terms of bases and airdields getting bombed, but also the threat even a few elderly MiGs would pose to helicopters and transport aircraft.
Back to
Lusty's recent deployment, the following ASW related links may interest you.
This from
Navy News
This from Janes
.....However, it was recognised that the submarine challenge of the future was more likely to emerge from regional navies acquiring modern diesel-electric submarines which, in the hands of proficient operators, might be used to close strategic choke points and/or threaten theatre entry.
So ASW in the RN did not die but it certainly withered. And at a time when UK forces are engaged in two enduring land-centric campaigns, it remains unfashionable and an area hard hit in resource terms.
It is a warfare area where the RN acknowledges it has taken a measure of risk in the short term. Furthermore, there is no doubting that the effective conduct of ASW depends on precious, but also highly perishable, skill sets that have been practised less and less in recent years.
For some the pendulum has swung perhaps too far. Which is why Exercise 'Phoenix', conducted by units of the RN's 'Orion 08' task group in April 2008 as they sailed east from the Arabian Sea towards India's western seaboard, was regarded as a welcome opportunity to test the pairing of its two latest ASW equipment assets: the Sonar 2087 low frequency active/passive sonar; and the Merlin HM.1 shipborne helicopter.
Conducted in the Indian Ocean from 16 to 20 April, Exercise 'Phoenix' looked to evaluate and test how the extended detection ranges expected of Sonar 2087 - a powerful area search sonar developed by Thales Underwater Systems - could be exploited by Merlin's own acoustics suite in order that potential submarine threats could be staved off at arm's length. What is more, it sought to do this in a particularly challenging sonar environment; the negative sound/speed profile encountered in the Indian Ocean means that sound propagates virtually straight down to the sea bed.