How continuous construction could fund a larger fleet

What would Britain have to cut to afford a substantially larger Royal Navy?

Less than expected if it maintained continuous production, because lower unit costs, employment, exports, and second-hand sales would offset part of the fleet bill.

The argument for a larger Royal Navy begins with reducing repeated development and industrial restart costs through continuous construction. Its counterfactual keeps Type 23 in production as an evolving design while also building a destroyer such as Type 45. Employment would return tax revenue, and ships already under construction could attract export buyers more readily than designs that existed only on paper. Type 26 and Type 31 are cited as examples of active production helping sales. One imagined Type 23 improvement adds 24 Mark 41 VLS cells for weapons such as Tomahawk. The answer recalls late Type 23 costs at roughly 120 million per ship and speculates that an improved version might have sold for about 150 million, rather than presenting a costed proposal. New export variants and sales of older ships after about 24 years would provide two potential sources of income.