Are you including Konfrontasi (Confrontation)?

Naval helicopters
 

Having spend some years on the bits that attach weapons to naval choppers, always annoyed they are only ever shown fishing things out of the oggin.
Whereas their primary job would be sinking enemy ships.
The choppers torpedo or missile would be a frigate's main armament.
The 4.5" popgun on the fore-deck would not be much use

And another bites the dust...


UK loses operational maintenance and repair capability as Diligence is retired early | IHS Jane's 360

Just realized why.
There's nothing left to fix... Hat , coat, etc

Don't need a mobile base when they're all parked up at Portsmouth or Plymouth anyway

My £0.02 worth....

The Navy should "defend the realm" along with the other armed forces as appropriate. Only after that is assured should we debate whether "force projection" is necessary, and if we decide it is, then you have to spend accordingly.
Problem is, the requirements change faster than the snails pace of procurement, so it's never right. Add inter-service bickering and top-heavy management (more admirals than ships?) and the results aren't good. Doing stuff on the cheap rarely works well, and when it does, it's usually down to the skill and bloody-mindedness of the guys at the pointy end somehow dragging it out of the fire.
Thing is none of our PPE graduate politicians ever seem to have bothered to study any history......

The Royal Navy will be even smaller when Scotland takes it share.

Neither have you by the sound of it.....


The idea that "defence of the realm" is best done at home is fallacious as any student of history will tell you.

Always fight on the enemies territory, and for that you need expeditionary.

Probably didn't put it very well, was trying to be distinct between defending ourselves and (for example) trying to police the world with the US.
(Bit simplistic, it's a lot more complex than that).

Some years ago, after yet another uninformed rant by the Public Accounts Committee, it was suggested that the "customers" (Service users) be invited to comment on the best and worst procurement projects they'd experienced. After all, Post Project Reviews are written by the project manager, not the customer. Few bothered (itself a feature of procurement), but analysis of the successful projects revealed some embarrassing similarities and recommendations, most of which involved stripping out 3 or 4 layers of upper "management" involvement from both sides. By far the most successful RN project was notable for the RN's Aircraft Support Executive withdrawing support for it before the contracts were even let, leaving MoD(PE) to do the job properly in peace.

Re retards comment on our technological edge being eroded. I suggest you keep an eye on Rolls Royce who whilst always screaming that they can't recruit enough engineering staff are quietly issuing redundancy notices to those they do have.