NY Times article on Royal Navy

[Bort]

Second it states that even welfare states such Germany and France spend more on their military. so how come Britain has the second biggest defence budget after the USa spending 2.5% GDP on defence which is £64 billion for just over 200,000 active personnel. France spends ONLY £41.5 billion or 1.95% for 259,050 personnel.

The answer to this is likely a simple one: operational costs.
The French aren't committing nearly as much of their miliatry to ops as the Brits are. It's one thing to have stuff, it's quite another to use it.