OPVs keep essential missions off high-end escorts

Patrol crews may be brave and skilled, but their ships were built for border security rather than combat damage. More heavily armed border-security vessels may offer some upgrade potential, while pure maritime-security hulls should move to safer operating areas. They can still deliver disaster relief in the Caribbean, enforce fisheries rules around Britain, and patrol quiet economic zones. Those missions continue during war and would otherwise consume scarce frigates or destroyers. The carrier-and-small-boat anecdote makes the force-structure point plainly: each hull should be assigned to a mission it can perform safely and proportionately.