https://x.com/CleansedTweets/status/2028842696769699942

https://x.com/giovannitweet/status/2029254155068375250

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843732&forum_id=2#49730496)

March 8, 2026

By: Peter Suciu

The Royal Navy—once the pride of the United Kingdom—has shrunk to around two dozen warships, insufficient to project power in any meaningful sense.

Even before President Donald Trump first took office in January 2017, some US lawmakers warned that the United States Navy was too small to meet the challenges of the 21st century. By that time, the service had shrunk to levels not seen since World War I.

The US Navy remains one of the strongest fighting forces in the world. It still has 11 aircraft carriers, more than any other country—and they also happen to be the world’s 11 largest. Yet the ongoing conflict in the Middle East shows that given America’s awesome global responsibilities, it may not have enough vessels in service. The US Navy is increasingly stretched thin, and there are concerns that it would struggle to deal with more than one crisis at a time.

That is a bad situation for Washington. But it could be worse, as an example across the Atlantic shows.

Does Britannia Still Rule the Waves? Not Really

While the US Navy struggles to respond to multiple crises, the UK’s Royal Navy may not even be ready to deal with a single crisis. Known for centuries as the “Senior Service,” the fighting force more closely resembles an elderly pensioner whose best days have long since passed than a fit and ready warfighter ready to address modern threats.

The Times reported this week that the Royal Navy is now at its smallest level since the English Civil War—which, for those who haven’t brushed up on the history of the British Isles, was fought in the mid-17th century, more than two centuries before the American Revolution. The 400th anniversary of that conflict’s beginning is a mere 16 years away.

As the UK’s paper of record noted, during the Falkland Islands War fought in 1982, the Royal Navy “deployed 127 ships” to the South Atlantic to fight Argentina. Today, the Senior Service has less than half that number of commissioned ships. Of those, just over two dozen are actual combat ships.

The Royal Navy’s surface fleet currently consists of two aircraft carriers, six Type 45 Daring-class destroyers, and seven Type 23 Duke-class frigates. It is supported by approximately 34 patrol and mine vessels, and two amphibious land platform ships. Of the warships officially in service, only about a dozen are active, with many others in long-term maintenance.

Military historian Mark Felton warned last year on his YouTube channel that the Royal Navy has more admirals than it has ships. It should be noted that not all of those individuals are in operational command; many of them have international and joint staff roles, with many responsible for shore-based staff, personnel training, logistics, and NATO responsibilities.

Still, it begs the question as to why the Royal Navy needs so many flag officers when it has so few warships.

The Royal Navy Has Two Carriers—but Can’t Support Them Properly

What is notable about the decline of the Royal Navy is that an attempt was made to correct course by building not one, but two aircraft carriers. Such vessels allow the UK to project power around the world and show the flag.

However, the Indo-Pacific deployments of both HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2021 and HMS Prince of Wales required support from multiple international partners. The Royal Navy lacks the escorts needed for one carrier strike group (CSG).

That’s partially why, during the tensions in the Middle East following the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, the Royal Navy never sent a carrier to support the US Navy. The Royal Navy did not have support ships, including fleet replenishment vessels, to make such a mission feasible, and there were likely concerns that the already-stretched US Navy would be required to protect the British flattop as well as its own. When HMS Prince of Wales led the Carrier Strike Group 2025 (CSG25) on the Operation Highmast deployment to the Pacific last year, the flotilla practically snuck past the Middle East.

Another factor in why no Royal Navy carrier took part in the operations was that the UK’s flattops haven’t been particularly reliable. Both were sidelined with serious mechanical issues.

A retired Royal Navy submariner told The Times that it was a mistake for the UK to purchase the two high-profile aircraft carriers instead of focusing on the smaller warships and submarines that actually back up a nation’s naval might.

“Instead of six Ferraris, we could have had 100 BMWs,” the retired sailor suggested.

The Royal Navy Was Caught Flat-Footed by the Iran War

This week, the UK has announced that the Type 45 Daring-class guided-missile destroyer HMS Dragon (D35) will be deployed to Cyprus, after RAF Akrotiri, the main base on the island, was struck by an Iranian drone. However, it will take several days for the lone warship to reach the region.

It is an indicator of the state of the Royal Navy, which can only offer a slow response with minimal capabilities.

The matter could be even more embarrassing for London, as French President Emmanuel Macron is ordering the Marine Nationale’s (French Navy’s) flagship nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the region. Neither British aircraft carrier is available, but for the reasons already stated, it is highly unlikely that the Royal Navy would or could deploy one.

History buffs may appreciate that the French will support NATO operations in the eastern Mediterranean, not far from the waters where the Royal Navy defeated the French Navy in the Battle of Aboukir Bay in 1798. If the battle were fought today, the Royal Navy wouldn’t stand a chance—if it could even show up!

About the Author: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu has contributed to dozens of newspapers, magazines, and websites over a 30-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a contributing writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. He is based in Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843732&forum_id=2#49730563)

Also, they have 2 of the 24 operational aircraft carriers in the world. The US has 11. China hasn't managed to build its fourth active carrier.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843732&forum_id=2#49730608)

i was completely unaware of how it had shrunk.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843732&forum_id=2#49730741)

decline by design

CDR Salamander

Mar 10, 2026

You have to be careful about assumptions, especially those you grew up with that are comforting, convenient, and once seemed so real, so solid, that they just were part of the landscape. They just, were.

For over a century, there was one jewel in the special relationship between the United States of America and her mother country, Great Britain. That jewel was the Royal Navy.

From the convoys and battleship divisions of the Great War, to Five Inch Friday off the Al Faw almost 90 years later, we always knew that there was another highly capable navy out there we could rely on—the Royal Navy and her Commonwealth.

During the interbellum, when the U.S. Navy was on par with the Royal Navy, we knew our friend was strong. Even when we passed her strength as WWII bled her white, we still knew the power she brought to sea.

She knew her existence was only secured by a strong navy. She’d never abandon that, would she?

During the Cold War, she fought with us sometimes and demurred at others—but regardless, we knew that the closer you came to the North Atlantic, you were in her waters.

Regardless of what happened, from the GIUK Gap, north—she would have it covered with our allies, or would be right next to us.

From Gibraltar in the west to Cyprus in the east, for centuries no movement was seen or could pass without wondering where the Royal Navy was.

Well within living memory, she could sortie a fleet all on her own and retake her territory from a hostile power.

That was then. This is now.

Let’s put their domestic political issues of today to the side for a moment, and just look at where they are—and where they will be for quite a while.

U.S. reality of securing the open seas are a long way from the vanity of denial and delusion such as Mike Mullen’s 1,000 Ship Navy. Even if we have reliable partners, nations have agency. Even if our closest ally of the last century does have the desire to come to our aid at sea—what can she bring?

We need to stop pretending we have a Royal Navy we knew in our youth or even that of two decades ago. No, we have something altogether different. Something shrunken. Something weaker. Something that is, in the end, really sad. A symptom of a nation who has lost an enthusiasm for herself or even an understanding of her national interest and led by a ruling class that seems uninterested in stewardship.

The state of the Royal Navy—a condition that took decades of neglect to manifest into its form today and will take decades to repair if there is ever the will to do so—has become, as navies can often do, a symbol of the state of the nation it serves.

There is a lesson here, not just for the United States, but all nations who consider themselves a naval power.

If you fail over and over to properly fund, develop, train, and support your navy, you can coast for quite awhile on the inertia of the hard work and investment of prior generations, but eventually that exhausts itself, and you are left with the husk of your own creation.

Yes, I’m looking at you, DC.

A token of this problem has revealed itself in all its saddest manifestation.

Behold HMS Dragon.

Preparations are continuing to get HMS Dragon ready to sail to help protect British troops in Cyprus with confirmation that the earliest she will leave Portsmouth is Wednesday (March 11).

The Type 45 destroyer is this afternoon (March 9) at the Portsmouth Upper Harbour Ammunition Facility, and according to tomorrow’s shipping movements she is due to be moved to BOWS S berth in the afternoon. The Royal Navy has said that she will depart some time this week.

As previously reported by The News, the government confirmed on March 3 that the UK would be sending the Portsmouth-based warship, one of the Royal Navy’s six Type 45 air defence destroyers, after RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus was hit by a drone.

This graphic from The Daily Mail is helpful in understanding not just how small the Royal Navy has become, but how few of its warships are even ready to go to war.

If you’re looking for a further fleshing out of the issue, Thomas C. Theiner has a sad tale of woe.

Two destroyers and three frigates. HMS Duncan just came back from exercises and for reasons unknown is a worse option than waiting for HMS Dragon to finish fitting out.

This is simply one thing: humiliation. The sovereign British bases on Cyprus were attacked by Iran…and the response…well…sigh. Richard the Lionhearted conquered the island first in 1191 just so he could get a break from seasickness on the way to the Crusades (one of my favorite historical maybes), and the British negotiated oversight from the Ottomans in 1878 only to annex it outright in 1914…and yet…well…sigh…the French will have to do it with an assist of the Spanish (!), Italians, and Dutch.

One would be hard pressed to find a nation’s ruling elite in the modern era who has so completely failed in the stewardship of their nation’s security.

There are rumors that HMS Prince of Wales may be ready for a deployment soon, but there are not enough ships to properly escort her. The Royal Navy will have to go begging to allies.

We covered the French deployment yesterday. Yes, as we discussed, it is not sustainable and I’d be curious about their individual unit readiness, but it is a signifiant fleet going to sea.

This is not unknown in the United Kingdom. I think, more than most, Jacob Rees-Mogg, outlines the issues well from inside their lifelines.

This is a deep-rooted failure of the state to recognize what its duty is.

A final postscript to this point, and it isn’t a happy one. It is a very American one.

I have great affection for our European allies. I served with them for years. I raised my children in their nations during their most formative years. I will always rise to ask my nation to help them in their times of trouble—but I also have to be realistic towards my own nation’s security requirements.

In the next few years, we may very well see this century’s high water mark for European military capabilities, especially at sea. For some, that high water mark is already behind us.

Most of our traditional European allies have exhausted their desire to be involved in other people’s conflicts—even when on their doorstep. They no longer concern themselves with larger issues, their ruling elite only concerned with petty social signaling or, increasingly, bending national efforts toward their own personal wealth building.

Their deathbed demographics combined with suicidal migration policies have condemned them to a mid-century (which starts in four years for those keeping track) that will be marked by growing sectarian strife, fraying social cohesion, cultural disintegration, and political upheaval.

They will be focused on internal challenges with collapsing welfare states, and the resulting movements toward re-nationalization and subsequent sovereignty conflicts—hot and cold.

Whatever the future holds for the U.S. and her friends in the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, or the Western Hemisphere—we should not expect much of any help from Europe of any significance.

In many cases it may not be that they don’t want to, it will simply be that they can’t.

https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-dragons-sad-tale

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843732&forum_id=2#49731472)

i'm not sure Starmer can do much.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843732&forum_id=2#49731473)

the French navy is framemogging the Royal Navy? almost beyond belief.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843732&forum_id=2#49734450)

“Currently the Royal Navy has 63 commissioned ships. But of this number only 25 are really fighting ships. That is submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates. The balance are support patrol and survey vessels which, though armed, are not true fighting warships.”

“Britain is of course involved with a variety of defense tasks worldwide. But due to endless defense cuts, the Navy is hard-pressed to fulfill them. So of the fighting ships in 2026, Britain possesses ten submarines, two aircraft carriers, six destroyers, and seven frigates.”

“Such a small fleet might be sufficient for a small nation engaged only in self-defense. But Britain still has some 15 overseas territories, many of which, like the Falkland Islands, require naval protection.”

“30 years ago in 1996, the Royal Navy had 17 submarines, 3 aircraft carriers, 15 destroyers, and 22 frigates. And it is generally agreed that the Royal Navy should still be this large, as the defense commitments are basically the same as they were in 1996.”

“As Britain continues to be put through a process termed ‘managed decline’ by generations of politicians, the armed forces have likewise been decimated until we faced a situation recently with the outbreak of the war in Iran, when Britain was seemingly incapable of dispatching, at short notice, a single warship to the defense of one of her sovereign bases overseas, this one in Cyprus, recently attacked.”

“It is too small.”

“We operate four Vanguard class ballistic missile submarines and at any one time one is supposed to be on patrol, one is undergoing training, one is in refit and one is undergoing trials.”

“We do know that the aging V-bot are requiring more frequent and longer refits and maintenance to stay in service. This of course is common sense. These are highly complex but elderly pieces of machinery. Your car goes the same way after all.”

“In 2023, the oldest boat in the class, HMS Vanguard, was returned to service after a refit lasting seven years. So between 2016 and 2023, officially only three V-boats were doing the work of four. That must have meant that each patrol was extended from three to four months, adding enormous strain to crews running submerged for such long periods of time.”

“Currently, HMS Victorious, the second boat in the class, is also in long-term refit from 2023, for at least three to four years, perhaps longer.”

“HMS Vengeance, the fourth boat, entered a long overhaul period and reactor refueling between March 2012 and February 2016. All this means that the Royal Navy only has three V-boats in operation at any one time, not four as advertised, with one always out of service in refit at any one time.”

“The state of Britain’s inadequate flotilla of fleet submarines is truly shocking. We have six Astute class fleet submarines in the Navy, which is too few, and, incredibly, in March 2026, only one is operational.”

“HMS Astute is undergoing a midlife re-validation period that will last for years. HMS Ambush has been in long-term maintenance since 2022. HMS Artful has been undergoing regeneration and maintenance since 2023. HMS Audacious has been in refit since 2023. And HMS Agamemnon is undergoing testing and sea trials and won’t actually enter full-time service until March 2027.”

“That leaves HMS Anson as the only operational British fleet submarine at this time. One active hunter/killer submarine to cover the entire fleet. She is currently out in the Middle East after leaving her base in Western Australia. Which military genius thought it was a good idea to reduce the hunter/killer fleet to just six boats?”

“Britain currently has two enormous carriers, though insufficient surface vessels to protect them properly. Only one is actually operational, HMS Prince of Wales, held at high readiness to sail to support military operations in the Middle East. Though without a protective umbrella of destroyers and frigates, she could very well end up being a three billion pound target.”

“The other one, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is in dry dock at Rosyth in Scotland, undergoing extensive repairs to her extremely temperamental propulsion system.” The need for adequate carrier fleet coverage is why the decommissioning of the USS Nimitz has been delayed until 2027.

“Successive governments have seen fit to think that only six destroyers are adequate, which is clearly deranged and incredibly irresponsible. So, out of six vessels, how many are operational in March 2026? A grand total of two. HMS Dragon, a vessel recently in the news that was supposed to be sent to Cyprus to protect British interests there, and HMS Duncan. The other four are all laid up for one reason or another. The class leader, HMS Daring, is preparing to return to service after an absence of eight years under refit.” Given that it generally takes three to five years for a complete stem-to-stern overhaul and refueling for an American aircraft carrier, eight years for a destroyer seems beyond excessive.

“And what about the frigates, the workhorse of the fleet? Here things have improved slightly. The Royal Navy has a fleet of seven type 23 frigates and in March 2026, five are active. Two are not. HMS Richmond is due to be decommissioned this year after 31 years service with no replacement. And HMS Kent is undergoing deep maintenance at Devport since 2024. But only five operational frigates is still a shockingly low figure. They are all old vessels as well.”

“If we compare today’s active fleet with the fleet that retook the Falklands in 1982, the sorry state of the Navy is plain to see. If another Falklands type crisis was to emerge today, could we deal with it? Probably not.”

“In 1982, the Royal Navy was quite large. Britain at the time had 3 aircraft carriers, 12 destroyers, compared to 6 today, and 43 frigates, compared to just 7 today.”

“In 1982, the Royal Navy deployed the Falkland’s task force, which was 2 aircraft carriers, 8 destroyers, and 16 frigates, plus an assortment of other vessels, and still managed to fulfill its other worldwide obligations.”

“If the Falklands kicked off today, the Royal Navy could at a stretch deploy one aircraft carrier, two destroyers, and five frigates, but only if it stripped all active vessels from all other duties worldwide.”

“If you look hard enough, you will find that another class of warship is actually doing most of the work in 2026, while the bigger warships remain largely out of action, the River-class Offshore Patrol Vessels.”

“At a little under 2,000 tons each, this class are really corvettes or sloops, the type of small warship that existed in earlier Royal Navy fleets, but they don’t have that designation today due to not being armed with anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, just guns.” That sounds like a political rather than military decision.

“Retrofitting these vessels might be a good idea to make them more like little frigates or corvettes to fill out the Navy’s pool of warships. Currently, there are seven vessels in service, and, incredibly all seven are currently operational. From protecting the seas around Britain to protecting the Falkland Islands and also deploying to the South Pacific, these insufficiently armed vessels are really doing the jobs of frigates and destroyers, which is an alarming indictment of the state of the Royal Navy in 2026.”

“A tiny navy with lots of commitments and too few ships and personnel, crippled by decades of political mismanagement, and now barely able to send to sea a single submarine or destroyer, let alone a fleet.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843732&forum_id=2#49765440)