Fast fleet oilers as the answer to lost bases

How should the Royal Navy adapt if it expects to lose overseas bases?

Build more fast fleet oilers so fuel can follow the fleet, rather than relying on a base-to-base tanker system.

The Royal Navy could retain broadly similar warship designs while accelerating a programme for fast fleet oilers. Such ships could keep pace with fleet manoeuvres, unlike tankers intended mainly to move fuel between fixed bases. Converting fast merchant hulls into amphibious transports also carried an opportunity cost when the fleet needed them for replenishment. Mobile support shipping becomes the central adaptation to uncertain basing, rather than extreme endurance built into every combatant.