The suggested alternative fleet includes twelve Type 45s and roughly eight additional Type 23s, with extra hulls providing more room for maintenance and refits. The discussion also proposes three aircraft carriers and three landing helicopter docks replacing Ocean, Albion, and Bulwark. That would supply six flight decks, provided enough F-35s were available to use them. This is a counterfactual assessment of what different spending and procurement decisions could have produced. The argument assumes Britain retained the infrastructure and design capability and needed to sustain construction through longer runs.
Notable Point · 2:11:24-2:12:51
What full Royal Navy production runs would have changed
The alternative force includes twelve Type 45s, more Type 23s, and six carrier or amphibious flight decks, conditional on the aircraft to operate from them.