I feel sorry to see the erosion of the Royal Navy, it has contributed much to shaping the navies of other nations for many years with much foresight and advancement in technology. The RN has suffered much due to the public perception that it was good for defending the British Empire, but with the Empire gone, and Europe being mostly stable (at least to history), it has had a hard time trying to justify it's existence.
In some sense Australia is lucky, due to the vast amount of coastline and a history of unstable neighbours, the defence forces are seen as important part of Australia. The fact that we are doing well economically at the moment means that we can afford to upgrade and expand our navy, army and airforce.
The hardest thing about doing this is finding enough people to man the new ships, subs, planes, tanks and trucks, let alone manning the existing harware!
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