S41
From the sounds of it, either you've done an EC tour or dealt with the bi-annual "savings measures" at Strike or ABW, all of which as you'll be well aware attempt to reprofile the cake to deal with the unexpected, the overspent or the latest political decision to put funds "into something". The reprofiling is almost always driven by what was DEP which spends an awful lot of time listening to HMT in conversations where MoD doesn't appear to have a speaking part. For the last ten years, most conversations have generally followed the "no more money overall, but by the way you'll have to fund this that and the other, which public pressure is demanding we do something about".......HMT do have an interest and while they would not meddle in cat C & D programmes, A & B are fair game as far as they're concerned.
In terms of a review, you have to ask what "the war" we equip to fight post-Herrick should be and indeed why? The justification for a platform/system/capability is always driven by whether it allows a win in a campaign. If so, what sort of campaign should we be fighting? Land-centric in Asia? Stabilisation in Africa? Anti-piracy at sea? NATO area, OOA? Control of access to resource is likely to be one of those and a large proportion of those are at or close to the sea. If you want to be taken seriously, you bring a decent capability or sit at the back and do as you're told. Which kind of brings us to the "do power projection or collapse on defence of the UK" question. DD/FF are only justifiable as part of a wider force in that context, as are AT, deep strike, conceivably heavy armour etc. Without the wider force, its the waddo wing, Tiffies for AD and some FSTA, SH, lots of infantry (largely TA), OPV, MCMV & coastal subs.
Just because something is "useful" doesn't mean you can justify it in the great SAG scenario in the sky (generation of which is one of the biggest wastes of time in the MoD!)