British ship exports and a possible County-class building programme

Britain supported its large naval-industrial base partly by building warships for foreign customers. Those customers did not necessarily want the details of their ships disclosed to rival powers, so the treaty's reporting requirements could weaken that business. Merchant-conversion restrictions also affected a Royal Navy that relied on armed merchant cruisers to supplement its cruiser fleet. One proposed British response is to use the absence of an aggregate cruiser limit to build at least four County-class ships a year, possibly six, as large and powerful as the individual limits allowed. This counterfactual programme could have kept work flowing through the yards, although cruiser construction would not have supported armour production as fully as battleship orders.