Within a British carrier group, a pair of Type 45 destroyers can provide area air defence while Type 23 or Type 26 frigates concentrate on anti-submarine warfare. That division of labour makes each specialist useful as part of a complementary force rather than deficient for lacking every escort role. Pressure to transform Type 26 into a much more expensive general-purpose combatant is therefore evidence of too few hulls, not necessarily poor ships or crews. The proposed remedy is to accelerate Type 83 and buy enough replacements, especially since cuts once justified as bringing Type 26 and Type 31 forward did not produce the promised result. A nine-ship Type 45 force could have generated three or four available destroyers and supported two task-group equivalents far more reliably than the six built.
Chapter · 49:46-52:26
Type 45 shortfall and specialist task groups
Type 45 can remain a specialist carrier-group air defender while frigates hunt submarines, but six hulls cannot reliably generate enough such task groups.