It does make one wonder though why we sell on ships supposedly past their sell by date, that go onto serve another 30 years of front line service in another man's navy, it makes you wonder if we really are getting value for money from some of our assets.
It's also worth remembering that sometimes the cost (to the UK) of operating those assets is the reason for replacing with newer assets.
Take manning - Hermes had a ships complement (ex airgroup) north of 1000 - and was steam powered. She was replaced by the Ark (V) which only needed 700 or so to run her and was powered by GTs in common with most of the rest of the fleet.
We binned the T22B2s because they needed 250-odd crew instead of the 190 or so on the T23.
I'd love to say we get equivalent numbers of newer platforms as a result, but we don't. But at least we can afford to operate (mostly...) the ones we've got.