Future RN

[ABBAFAN]

What is the Royal navy's spending priotrity in the next 20 odd years?

[Melonfish]

you forgot mothball the fleet and pretend the rest of the world doesnt exist.....
pete

[Oberon]

Alternatively there's "mothball the fleet and let the US do the sea fighting for us." approach.

These days, it seems that it's all about projecting power without the use of nuclear weapons. Therefore, SLBMs are slowly becoming un-nessecery. Of course, they're still needed as a retalitory strike weapon, so long as nations with dubious intents posess the levelling technology of the nuke.
However, the first main problem the UK should address, is the fleet air arm, or lack of. We need that JSF air cover, and a few new carriers wouldn't go amiss. Our attack subs are still in quite good shape, especially now that our main threat is not coming screaming out of the Barents, but slowly plodding its way through the China sea, or out of the Straits of Hormuz....we could do with some new ones...but, we need improvements to our surface fleet first.

IMHO, Britain needs to do what the US did during the two world wars, pull out of everything, regroup itself, reorganise itself and build itself back up into some kind of decent shape. We held the fort whilst the US built itself up, now it's their turn to hold it while we take time to reorganise ourselves, I'm sure they are quite capable of doing it, and its not as if we'd abandon them completely. Plenty of Americans helped us in the European war before 1941, so we'd have some troops to help them where needed....but Britain is a bit of a mess right now, particularly in the military's sense.
We need to sort it out...now...before we're caught with our pants down.

[Kapitan_Phillips]

I say divert more attention onto the destruction of a threat, rather than the whole deterrent thing. We need more attack submarines.

[Kapitan]

We need more destroyers we are now down to just 4 (back in 1999 we had 12) and if these plans go ahead we will have none at all operational.

We had something like 22 frigates now we have just 15 and with these cuts your looking around 8 left if not less.

One of our carriers has gone leave two very over worked left and chances are another one will be cut and the other will just be ground into the sea.

Submarines have remained stable the new ones have arrived late what a surprise and the CVF is on the rails at least.

The type 45's have already seen a buget cut from 8 to just 6 there was a seacret whisper that the navy wants to re cut down to just 4.

What GB needs i think is this:

2 or 3 CV's
at least 8 DDG's
at least 15 FFG's
a good 20 Mine warfare
10 patrol vessels
4 SSBN's at least
8 attack submarine
13 auxilaries

[ABBAFAN]

i would say dispense with ssbns if only because its absolutley necessary due to costs.ssns could conduct sub strategic deterence with nuclear cruismissiles.
the carriers and escoerts are more crucial although if there was money enough id say have ssbns at least until the vanguard class reach obsolecence.
i think more than 13 auxiliaries would be needed also to avoid overstretch.perhaps 16-20.more catering staff to reduce workload also.

if one of the branches of service were needed to be abolished id say the air force as the RN can to a certain extent do that job.