The Type 22's roughly 5,000-ton scale gave it room to combine combat capability with the endurance and accommodation expected of a presence frigate. The roughly 3,500-ton Type 23 was designed more narrowly around anti-submarine war fighting. Type 23s later performed wider missions creditably, but their heavy use also shows the strain created when a focused design becomes the fleet's everyday general-purpose ship. The comparison turns displacement into an institutional lesson: a smaller hull may be efficient for one fight yet costly when policy repeatedly assigns it peacetime work it was not built to sustain.
Notable Point · 46:00-47:35
Type 22 and Type 23 reveal the cost of role mismatch
The larger Type 22 was conceived for general-purpose war fighting and presence, while the smaller Type 23 was a focused combatant later stretched into broader duties.