The world of sea warfare has changed dramatically in the past 30 years. There are now basically three types of naval craft: submarines; ships big enough to survive torpedoes/missiles; and those that will be destroyed in the first several minutes of a war. This will be proven in the next real skirmish. With the end of manned tactical aircraft on the horizon, sea war will become an affair between submarines and UCAVs. There are no longer any carrier-based fixed-wing ASW aircraft; the P-3 is on the way out; and the P-8 idea of ASW from 20,000 feet is nonsense. Once the real shooting begins, our surface Navy will be eliminated in several days.
Definitely a solid point there. There has been some argument in the UK (mostly from the military threads) that the costs of the new carriers (£6bn and rising) could have been put to much better use getting another round half dozen of the Astute SSN’s.
Navies will become 2-tier; a coast guard for patrolling and a different war-fighting capability. I think both the US and UK might just have missed a trick in changing forever the traditional (past 70 years or so) makeup of a fleets into a sub-surface and drone/UAV carriers.
IF you think the US navy would last ‘several days’, I can safely say the only useful UK navy asset in a shooting war would be the Astute’s. Everything else is basically a target.