Will the Royal Navy become insignificant in future?
In the days of 10,000 ship navies, control of the seas was of paramount importance. Today control of the skies and indeed space is much more important and if you have control of the skies/space, you effectively almost have control of the seas. The navy has evolved to suite the current threat environment. The UK needs the navy for power projection and counter terrorism. This requires aircraft carriers and amphibious vessels. The current ships of these types under construction will be the largest ships to ever serve in the RN so that is significant in terms of how important the RN is. The defence of UK mainland still requires a navy but a much larger share of that defence can be done with air power. To illustrate this point, if a foreign navy attacked the UK mainland, the enemy would have to deal with hundreds of Tornado’s, Harriers and Typhoons engaging them thousands (yes, thousands) of miles from the UK with sophisticated weapons. This is why the RAF has proportionately become the mos
