Originally Posted by
vecvechookattack
be bold and get rid of capability.
Lets start with ASW. Lets get rid of our entire ASW cap. All Nimrods to go. All Type 23 frigates to go. All Merlin (Grey) to go.
Any Offensive Maritime Patrol capability should go. So, we get rid of all Tornado aircraft, All Nimrods and the Sentinel.
Taking this seriously for a moment.
There are four threats components against a surface force.
The one that Vec choses to ignore is the sub-surface threat. A threat that can endure for days, can be posed by a large number of potentially hostile states (PHS), and once in the vicinity of a surface force can be very hard to detect even with modern ASW forces. If this threat is ignored then the only defence is to stand-off out of range. The range of an SSK OTOH could therefore neutralise a surface force.
The air threat is of much shorter duration than a sub-surface threat and that posed by PHS much shorter in range. Effective ASW defence would therefore avoid any air threat.
The surface threat may be similar to the sub-surface threat and increase in relation to proximity to the littoral but never neutralised by increasing stand-off distance. It can be probably be countered effectively with a gun and CIWS.
Thus if there is no ASW capability there is no need of an AAW capability and we can revert to a pure gun boat role. As the ASW tactic requires manoeuvrablity and great stand-off distance it would probably negate any OCA capability so we could also dispense with flight decks.
Well?
So that means we only need the capabilities of the our continental neighbours, the French excepted.