Older ships were retained while another war seemed possible, but a prolonged peace makes their cost harder to defend. The campaign therefore starts deleting pre-1930 designs and thinning the submarine fleet. This happens within a wider budget problem: losses run at about 24 billion per month while 158 new ships consume a substantial share of expenditure, even though transport capacity and research remain healthy. Repeated refits have kept some old designs in service, but they do not settle which hulls still provide useful capability. The peace dividend forces decisions about which old hulls still justify their cost and which should give way to new construction.
Notable Point · 1:28:32-1:38:23
Using a peace dividend to modernize an over-aged fleet
Prolonged peace removes the reason to retain every old hull, so the campaign begins deleting pre-1930 designs while balancing modernization against a large active construction programme.