Five new capital ships produce a three-tier battle fleet

Building three battleships and two battlecruisers together gives British yards more armor throughput and makes each design part of a family instead of an isolated pair. The Nelson-type ships might trade some protection for speeds in the 25-to-28-knot range, with later Queen Elizabeth modernization also emphasizing speed. The resulting fleet has three functional tiers: battlecruisers for fast task groups and surface-raider interception, a deployable fast battle fleet for distant crises, and older slow ships that maintain deterrent presence after the mobile force moves on. Construction scale thus shapes doctrine and the forces available for each mission.