Future of the Royal Navy

At the beginning of the 1990s the Royal Navy was a force designed for the Cold War. The main purpose of its fleet, based around three small aircraft carriers and a force of anti-submarine frigates and destroyers, was to search for – and if required, to destroy – Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic. The 1982 Falklands War also demonstrated a requirement for the Royal Navy to maintain an expeditionary capability.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Royal Navy has been required to meet a wider range of objectives around the world, while experiencing a gradual reduction in the size of its surface fleet. Fixed-wing carrier operations ceased in 2010 with the retirement of the last Harrier GR7/GR9 aircraft. This capability will not be restored until the Joint Combat Aircraft (F-35) and the first Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier become operational around 2020. Cuts have also seen the sale of three Type 23 frigates in 2005/6 and the early decommissioning of four Type 22 frigates in 2010/11.

Over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s, the navy began a series of projects to improve its fleet, with a view to providing enhanced capabilities, although many programmes were reduced in scale. This has led to the replacement of smaller and more numerous units with fewer, but larger, units. The main examples of this are the replacement of twelve Type 42 destroyers with six Type 45s and the replacement of the three 20,000 tonne Invincible-class aircraft carriers with two operational 70,600 tonne Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers.

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Wikipedia