In his article “How Russia’s Naval Rearmament Has Gone Unnoticed”, Ian Proud delivers a scathing assessment of the Royal Navy, declaring that it has been “reduced to a small regional naval power, able occasionally to deploy further afield.”
It’s a dramatic claim — and one that’s simply not borne out by the facts. While Proud is right to highlight issues around readiness and resourcing, his conclusions suffer from selective framing, omission of key context, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what defines modern naval power.
Let’s be clear: this is not a puff piece. At the UK Defence Journal, we’ve routinely exposed serious Royal Navy shortcomings — including long-standing availability problems with Type 45 destroyers, under-strength submarine fleets, and the glacial pace of shipbuilding. We’ve published exclusive stories on HMS Daring’s prolonged layup, Astute-class submarine delays, and the uncertainty around amphibious capabilities.
But factual scrutiny is very different from fatalism. Ian Proud’s central thesis — that Britain’s Navy is no longer credible on the global stage — is not just flawed, but actively misleading.
It’s also worth noting a small but telling detail: Proud refers multiple times to “HMS The Prince of Wales” — an incorrect rendering of the ship’s name. The correct title is simply HMS Prince of Wales. While this might seem minor, accurate naming is a basic standard in defence writing. In a piece that questions the Royal Navy’s seriousness, such slips — however unintentional — subtly undermine the article’s authority and suggest a degree of detachment from the subject matter being critiqued. Let’s continue.
“Half the Fleet” Gone East?
Proud writes with obvious disdain for the recent Indo-Pacific deployment of Carrier Strike Group 25 (CSG25), stating:
“Almost half of Britain’s fighting ships embarked from Portsmouth and Devonport to much fanfare. When I say half of the ships, I mean, specifically, 1 aircraft carrier, 1 destroyer, 1 frigate, and 1 attack submarine. That’s right, four vessels.”
This is not only hyperbolic — it’s factually questionable. The Royal Navy has over 60 commissioned vessels. “Fighting ships” is never defined, but even if one restricts the count to major surface combatants and submarines, four ships do not represent half the fleet. Moreover, Proud fails to mention that the UK’s carrier group is not operating alone — it’s joined by frigates from Spain, Norway, and Canada, and supported by Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels and NATO partners across the region. This is a coalition operation. That matters, because it’s perhaps the point.
CSG25 isn’t just about hardware; it’s about power projection, alliance leadership, and deterrence. Britain is one of only three countries in NATO with a carrier strike capability of this kind. Calling the deployment a hollow gesture — simply because other vessels remain in dock — ignores the strategic significance of sustained, long-range maritime operations, something Russia finds incredibly difficult to do, by the way.
Proud claims:
“The Royal Navy now has only one destroyer, two frigates… to defend British shores.”
This assertion appears to refer to ships available on a single day, not the fleet’s actual composition or typical operational posture. Vessels rotate in and out of maintenance, training, and deployment — a basic function of readiness cycles in all modern navies. A more honest assessment would note that the Royal Navy operates:
- 2 Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers
- 6 Type 45 destroyers
- 8 Type 23 frigates
- 4 Vanguard-class SSBNs
- 5 Astute-class SSNs
- Numerous OPVs, minehunters, and support vessels
Yes, some are in extended refit. Yes, fleet numbers are tight. But to reduce the Navy to “one destroyer and two frigates” is not only factually questionable — it borders on disingenuous. It erases the work being done in the Gulf, in the Pacific, in the Atlantic, and under the waves by the nuclear deterrent that Proud barely acknowledges.
Proud does refer in passing to the UK’s strategic submarine force:
“…not including the nuclear missile submarines that are Britain’s Continuous At Sea Deterrent.”
This line deserves more than a footnote. The Royal Navy’s Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) has been operational since 1969 without a single gap — a feat only matched by the United States. These submarines guarantee national survival in the worst-case scenario and are a critical part of NATO’s collective defence posture.
Their significance cannot be brushed aside just because they don’t fit the “seaworthy” surface fleet narrative Proud wants to advance.
Russia’s Rearmament
The article presents a daunting tally:
“Since 2011, Russia has taken delivery of 27 submarines, 6 frigates, 9 corvettes, 16 small missile ships…”
There’s no denying Russia has invested in naval recapitalisation. But the vast majority of those hulls are small missile ships, patrol boats, and coastal corvettes — vessels best suited for the Baltic, Black Sea, and Arctic, not blue-water power projection. Many lack the range or logistics support for sustained operations far from home.
And many are based in vulnerable, constrained environments like the Black Sea, where Ukraine has demonstrated that modern coastal defences can bottle up Russian vessels with increasing success.
By contrast, the Royal Navy may have fewer hulls, but its ships are designed for long-range, global operations, with carrier air power and allied interoperability at their core. Quantity has a quality of its own, Proud reminds us — but so does strategic depth.
Misjudging Modern Naval Power
At one point, Proud claims:
“Today, there are only three global naval powers: the United States, China, and Russia.”
This is a remarkable statement. Russia lacks a carrier strike capablities, extended blue water deployment capabilities and global basing. Britain, by contrast, is one of the only navies in the world with:
- A carrier strike capability
- A nuclear ballistic missile force
- A global basing footprint (Gibraltar, Bahrain, Singapore, the Falklands)
- Regular combined operations with US, French, Japanese, and Australian forces
Calling Britain “regional” and Russia “global” reverses the definitions of expeditionary capability and strategic endurance.
Procurement Problems, Yes — But Not Paralysis
Proud writes:
“The increase in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP will mostly be swallowed by the MoD’s bloated procurement programs that are typically delayed and always over budget.”
There’s truth here — procurement has been a persistent headache. But he ignores what’s being funded: the Type 26 Global Combat Ship, the Type 31 general-purpose frigate, Fleet Solid Support Ships, DragonFire directed energy weapons, and of course, submarines.
The National Shipbuilding Strategy Refresh and the formation of UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) are tackling these issues, imperfectly but actively. And despite delays, the UK is one of the few nations with an ongoing naval construction pipeline across multiple ship classes.
There’s no denying the Royal Navy is under pressure — from stretched resources, ageing platforms, and recruitment gaps. But it is also modernising in earnest:
- Manpower is growing again after years of decline
- HMS Glasgow, the first Type 26 frigate, is fitting out
- CSG25 is demonstrating multinational power projection across half the globe
- Directed energy weapons, UAV integration, and AI systems are being trialled and tested
The Navy’s strength lies not in volume, but in persistence, precision, and partnerships. That’s what Proud overlooks.
Proud’s concern that a U.S. pullback from NATO could overburden Britain’s naval resources is not without merit, however, given uncertainties around American commitments in 2025. However, this scenario underscores the Royal Navy’s critical role as a NATO linchpin, not a reason to retreat to the Atlantic. The Navy’s ability to lead multinational operations, as demonstrated by CSG25 and joint exercises like Steadfast Defender 2024, positions it to bridge gaps in alliance burden-sharing.
With two aircraft carriers, a modernising frigate fleet, and interoperable platforms, Britain can sustain NATO’s maritime presence in the Atlantic and beyond, even under strained conditions.
Realistic, Not Resigned
Proud concludes that:
“Britain would be better placed keeping its handful of ships in the Atlantic.”
That is not how security works in 2025. In an interconnected world, forward presence and multinational engagement are essential, not optional. The Royal Navy’s Indo-Pacific deployments aren’t vanity projects — they are a recognition that British and allied security are shaped on the high seas, not just at home ports.
To summarise: the Royal Navy is not without issues — we’ve reported on many of them. But to call it a shell of a service while praising a Russian Navy hemmed in by geography and beset by sanctions is, frankly, a misreading of both power and purpose.
The Royal Navy remains:
- A convening power
- A nuclear-armed deterrent force
- A platform for allied cooperation
- And a globally relevant military service
It may need rebuilding. But it is not irrelevant.
It has to be said that it is absolutely true that RN is paper thin on surface escorts and submarines as some truly awful past decisions were made.
And that view can be obtained by comparing ‘Robertson’s numbers’ from 1997/8 with current numbers. That is hard published HMG fact based on a proper analysis.
It is, as you say, also true that T26/31 and FSS are funded and in build. But that doesn’t do anything for the tiny SSN numbers we now have.
It also does nothing to rebuild the fleet to ‘Robertson’s numbers’ which are the real required force levels to persistently undertake the full range of real required taskings.
I agree that describing Russia as a surface naval power is pure comedy as RN could take out its surface fleet in an afternoon. However, Russia does present a submarine threat and traditionally it was RN’s main task to deal with that and the mass doesn’t exist to do that.
However, set against that there is a wider distribution of platforms such as P8 – so it is not a simple linear analysis.
The RN is very capable and would certainly constrain and hurt the Russian navy in the N Atlantic but I fail to see how the RN, today, would take out the Russian surface fleet in an afternoon.
NSM is good but has range limitations and the RN lacks mass of NSM across the surface fleet.
F35 with Paveway would have a very difficult time against Rus navy air-defence assets due to having to get well within IR tracking range to deploy PW IV
Astutes are great but can’t be everywhere.
I think you are overlooking the other roles and modes that other missiles can have.
You don’t necessarily need a specialised AShM to take out a ship. Any old missile that hits the primary radar or the bridge or magazine will do the job. The target is then crippled and then be finished off with helicopter launched AShM.
So the priority is actually any *accurate* package delivery.
There are 11 sets of eight NSM announced and it is likely that they will equip the T45s and T31s but it is possible they will be rotated to deployed ships.
We wouldn’t be able to take out the Russian Surface fleet in an afternoon, but that’s because they’re too spread out.
Realistically the largest fleet the RN would face is the Northern Fleet, which consists of:
-Kuznetsov, which is probably never going to sea again.
-1 Kirov Class Cruiser
-1 Slava Class Cruiser
-3 Udaloy Class Destroyers
-3 Admiral Gorshkov Class Frigates
-7 Corvettes (mostly small 1970’s era Grisha class)
Calibrate this with a reminder that 1 of the Slavas was sunk by the Ukranians with a pair of Neptune ASM’s (which are more analogous to Harpoon) from shore, and yeah I think the RN could clean that mess up in an afternoon. After that we’d have to sail to the Baltic to take on the 1 Frigate and 26 Corvettes the Russian Baltic fleet has, but given that, with the exception of the 4 Stereguchy class Corvettes, those 26 vessels have little more than Manpads in the air defence role, even Paveway IV should deal with them.
” forward presence and multinational engagement are essential”
Yes. This!
The SSN problem could be quickly improved if they just stopped fannying around with the dry dock issue!
I disagree with a lot of the authors optimism.
Proud is probably not far off the mark with available warships. The government and admiralty include pointless vessels armed only with small calibre machine guns or no more than 30mm cannons. Seriously what are they going to do against any missile or medium or large calibre gun armed ships ?
There’s always losses in war,these ships in deep refit would take months to be ready so counting them is misleading. The grandstanding of the type 26 is again misleading,the first ship is years away from being ready never mind the rest of the class. If the carrier group was destroyed what would that leave at sea ?
Not to mention the carriers only having 3 Phalanx for self defence
Yes, on the vessel. But that vessel does not act in isolation.
Plus on the Carrier varied ESSM.
Plus on the Carrier an Air group of F35 with ASRAAM and AMRAAM.
Plus T45 escort/s with Sea Viper, CIWS, ESSM and Wildcat/Martlet.
Plus T23 escort/s with CAAM, ESSM and Merlin & AA.
They are actually the best defended airfields we posses.
The Invincible’s had Sea Dart and it was deleted to make more room.
I’m guessing ESSM in this context is not Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile.
Such humour and ridiculous article from a guy like Ian who really do not know anything about military field, not a single truth. Even a thousand frigates will be totally destroyed if it not have other systems support or opponent mighty carrier group have enough supply and ammunitions. In fact, there is only three global sea power, US, China, UK. And only three countries have enough suitable oversea military bases for global presence which is US, UK and France. Russian navy without their SSN will be beaten by Italian navy without doubt.
Believe your own opinion however it is dangerous trying to convince others.
The Navy is a thinned out fleet expected to the government’s foreign policy that we are a global force.
Mark, CSG 21 and CSG 25 prove that the UK and the RN are a global force.
Proves nothing of sorts.
Only US and and eventual upcoming China have it. You are only a global force when you can deploy carriers in any place of the world 365 days per year.
The Royal navy has two carriers and a global network of bases so it can deploy anywhere in the world 365 days of the year. Or do you mean deploy every where in the world 365 days of the year?
Because even the USN can’t do that.
The truth as always lies between the two positions. The Royal Navy today is the smallest ever in terms of hulls, albeit with better capability. There is a building programme , a painfully slow one that will deliver 13 new frigates by 2035, by which time the T23’s will be exhausted. Two more Astute’s also to come. Apart from that there is nothing in the pipeline, at least not with construction underway.
It IS true that the R.N. has a global capability, but again one carrier with 18/24 F35’s being deployed every five years is not a global capability to test the likes of the Chinese. If we are to be a true global power it requires the U.K. to form with allies a permanent naval force in the region. Can we do that?
We now have, after the sale of Albion and Bulwark, no real amphibious capability, but Australia does and so does Japan. Future partners?
Manning is improving but a hundred people here and there is not sufficient to bring out the truth strength of the ships we have available, certainly not in times of conflict. Could we “do a Falklands” No, we couldn’t. Sierra Leone?
Five more T31’s would improve global reach, even if as the come into the fleet, the Rivers have to sacrificed. Also more aircraft, manned or unmanned, otherwise two carriers capable of deployment will not happen.
It never makes any sense to rate a blue water navy on hulls, gross tonnage is what matters.
If you considers hulls then North Korea and Iran are the undisputed navy hegemony of the world closely followed by the Somali pirates.
On a tonnage bases(discounting Russian rusting hulks) the UK compares very favourably on a global basis in third place with around 865,000 tonnes which is an Increase since the year 2000 when it had 700,000 tonnes (ref council on Geo Stratgey)
Personally, I think the opposite is true. Nobody is going to say “let’s put 10,000 tons in the Med” They are going to suggest a detroyer or frigate. In other words one or two ships, ie hulls. We can only be where we have a “hull” available.
You can think what you like mate that’s your right but the global strategic community and the vast body of naval doctrine disagrees with you.
Tonnage has always been the measure of a modern navy.
Tonnage is the reason the USN is a globe spanning blue water super power and China is still a regional green water navy even though China has many more hulls.
ENATO has more hulls than the USA, more submarines as well but no one would pretend that European NATO is anything like as powerful at sea as the USA.
The tonnage is massively flattered by two huge carriers and four large fleet tankers.
Now we have lost
Two Albions – which are quite big ships
5 T23
2 smaller tankers
Christ, please god not more T31 (pointless) class. The RB2s are doing a great job and anymore T31s will quite simply be there for numbers only rather than meet a requirement. Rather keep the RB2s and build more T26s/SSNs, but no more light frigates. If you want to keep Babcock busy get them to build a semi autonomous MHC/ASW Sloop class.
Why is a T31 with a Mk41 VLS pointless?
If you added a sonar it would be an excellent all rounder?
I think one is over optimistic about the RN . Yemen is a perfect example of the RN no longer fit for purpose . I view Yemen as a defining moment , more so than Iran in the Gulf a couple of years ago where uk barely able to provide one ship. Yemen is the first time in hundreds of years where the RN has been unable to provide protection for UK shipping and vital trade . The UK was barely able to provide one ship for the Yemen with gaps in between. For the UK to protect its critical strategic interests abroad such as The Antarctic , Falklands , Ascension , St Helenas Islands to name a few as well as safe passage for UK commercial shipping through the Gulf and Suez the uk will require at least another 6 ships ontop if existing numbers .
Precisely.
Also there are several nations around the world expanding there naval presence and the uk is serious falling behind the new wave of nations . China is already entering the Mediterranean, Caribbean and the North and South Atllantic . It will be only a couple of years before China has a Permanent base in the North or South Atlantic. Somewhere in West Africa. I believe China is also pursuing one of the islands off Africa as well as the Carribean area. Then the UK will realise yet again what we already know , that the UK and Europe are short of frigates and destroyers
You said there are several nations expanding naval capabilities but you only mention one. Who are the others?
Europe has 116 major surface combatants and its numbers are growing.
How many do you think it needs to deal with China in the Atlantic?
“116” that made no dent in Houthis.
China has 140 and the USA has 85 so I’m not sure what your point is?
When you look at the USA’s 85 major combatants then you realise how significant an RN of 30 combatants would actually be.
And Saudi Arabia’s multi year bombing campaign didn’t make a dent in them either. It’s almost like the Houthi’s, after a decade of Asymetric Warfare against an opponent trying to bomb them into the ground, know a thing or two about surviving long range strikes. But you know… facts and all that… difficult I know.
Well said George, the Royal Navy force of the late 70’s and 80’s often seems to be held up as some benchmark of what a “proper” navy should look like however that royal navy was relegated to a regional navy primarily based on a single role of anti submarine warfare in the North Atlantic.
Its ships were largely cheap and nasty low end even by the standards of the time. It struggled to deploy to the south Atlantic to conduct a medium sized out of area operation and was very lucky to get away with it which in no small part was due to the bravery and sacrifice of its crews.
Given that it was facing off against a Soviet navy with up to 400 submarines, many of them nuclear, it was not even very large with just 50 surface combatants and 20 submarines.
The Royal navy of today has an all high end platforms, many of them amongst the best in the world, Astute, t23/26, T45 and a much more balanced fleet than the 80’s.
It’s aviation capability is now approaching a level beyond anything it had during the Cold War with two fully operational super carriers operating a genuinely world class fast jet as opposed to an assortment of war time emergency builds and refits or a cheap a cheery through deck cruiser force with little in the way of organic air wing capability.
Certain commentators love to measure the navy and the UK in a vaccum or failing that some illusionary rose tinted vision of the past (when men were men, beers were cheap and Britannia ruled the waves)
The reality is in comparison to our only local threat (Russia) the UK is in a massively superior position relative to where it was in 1990 or at any time during the Cold War.
The only other conceivable major adversary is tens of thousands of miles steaming away and surrounded by other allied navy’s.
Clearly there are loads of problems and areas we need to invest more in but that’s always been the case for the Royal Navy. The navy of today is in a pretty decent position compared to many parts of the pst and with a bit of extra sustained investment can get to a really good place in the next ten years.
I’ve made the point many times before that the RN of the ‘70s and ‘80s had a huge number of poor hulls that had some highly dubious equipment fitted and were too small to upgrade and there were too many hulls to be able to afford to upgrade them!
So yes, the new hulls are all vastly superior but there are not enough of them.
Exercise Med Strike is currently showing what eNATO navies can do if they need to. It’s impressive, but perhaps in the wrong place – Russia doesn’t have any Mediterranean or Near East ports to operate out of so it’s difficult to see how they could be a strategic threat in those areas.
Russia is more of a threat in the far north, but presumably ‘Med Strike’ could equally be ‘Arctic Strike’, with the French instead of the Italians. That still leaves Italy and Spain guarding our southern flank.
Ian Proud’s disdain for everything British shines through in all his writings. George is right, in a few years the RN will have a high quality, modern fleet. More generally, eNATO will be much more powerful than it currently is. Until then, we’ll bumble through. DON’T PANIC!
“ It’s impressive, but perhaps in the wrong place”
Hmmme well there’s that think about getting people to participate??
So make it local and at a nice time of year?
Russia *had* a Mediterranean port and fleet until very recently, and it still has a Black Sea fleet, and still has allies in the Middle East, notably Iran.
Is he wrong though? The RN could not deploy a force like this in both the Pacific and Atlantic simultaneously. Or in both North and South Atlantic which is possibly more important to us. Its a choice of which region the force is deployed in. And even this force needs allied support, we simply don’t have the hulls to support it unless we accept it reduces availability elsewhere. So is he really wrong?
George is right.
The RN remains somebody amongst the worlds navies with capabilities few other nations have.
It is just far, far too small.
I’m always amused when Trolls here surface and deride the RN. I then often ask, out of 195 nations, name those with better? There are some, but not many.
We are no longer a superpower, we are a medium sized world power, and there are several of those.
Name the nations who can do a CSG25?
The US, china and France..that’s it…
Italy increasingly.
The most accurate description of the RN appeared in an article on the Thin Pinstriped Line website: ” part time blue water navy”..
The author tends to be upbeat on most issues but in this case he is being absolutely accurate. The RN can generate an occasional CSG at distance from time to time and keep a warship or two forward deployed. But it’s support assets are now too limited- 1 FSS still out of action- to conduct operations at distance on a sustained basis.
Arguing that the RN of the 1980s was a limited ASW fleet, equipped mainly to counter Russian submarines, misses the point. The only material threat at that time was the Russian submarine fleet. So the RN focus was entirely appropriate.
But what are the threats in the 2020s and what assets does the RN need to counter them. Because of long procurement timescales, the RN now has 2 carriers intended to support expeditionary warfare as decided 27 years ago in SDR 1998. But other assets to support expeditionary warfare have been scrapped or disposed of. In part this is because after the obvious failure of interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the appetite for more has vanished. On the basis of too big( and expensive) to fail, we have kept the carriers even as the threat is now from the same source as in the 1980s – Russia, in particular its submarine fleet. But because of the glacial pace of building, our ASW fleet is pitifully weak with modern platforms years away from FOC. Meanwhile we are building 5 GP frigates intended to be forward deployed to replace OPVs( what extra ability they add, I’m unsure) with no ASW capability at all.
The RN is, most agree, too small. But worse than that, it is illogical and unbalanced. A RN structured with a primary role of defending the UK, its offshore assets and undersea connectors, might look rather different.
You make a good point but the required support elements are already on order in the FSSS at present and with four state of the art Tide class in service. 7 support ships is plenty.
The RN has no need to regularly deploy large assets like carriers outside of the Euro Atlantic area.
Even when we controlled a quarter of the world and had 300 million people to look after in the Indo pacific we rarely deployed capital ships in the area. When we did we sent a large squadron of them normally once or twice a decade we have been doing the same thing since the 1920’s.
Which is exactly what we are doing now and we did in 2021 and 2009 and so on.
Agree this was a weak piece of work.
In defence matters as in politics more generally if you don’t deliver reliably on the basics then you open yourself to easy criticism from detractors.
The Fleet Solid Support Ship procurement. The fact that frigate replacement is now absolutely last minute. The drop in SSNs available because of delays in the Astute programme. The capability gap in AEW. The continued failure to hit recruitment targets. The impending crisis in fast jet trainer capability.
These are all fundamental issues for defence capability. They have been badly handled. It makes it easy to criticise.
We need to get back to boringly consistent basic competence, especially in procurement.
The UK could at a pinch put together another carrier strike group, but perhaps not much more. From that point of view you can see why someone might say half the British Navy is off to the Pacific.
Yes it would have spare T45 and T23;vessels but would it have sufficient crew and helicopters to do other tasks?
As someone else said the truth falls between the stated points. The biggest shortfall isn’t necessarily in shops but in trained and exercised crew. I know what I’m going to suggest isn’t what has been done in the past but for every three ships of a class we ought to have three full crews plus two smaller crews to manage the vessels while in dock.
One vessel fully active would have two full crews doing four months on and four months off with the vessel being anywhere in the world as has been the case for some OPVs for several years.
The second vessel would have a full crew plus sufficient other crew to allow the vessel to operate from a UK based for a year or two with must have crew elements rotating as required so that it can be sent to sea quickly if required in day 72 hours.
The third vessel would have a part crew enough to make sure that it can be reactivated at some time in the future. This could include longer maintenance periods and upgrades but it not required also cover extended rest periods alongside. During rest periods it ought to be possible to activate and set off to sea within say 14 days.
For 3 vessels with a crew of 200 that represents a personnel requirement of over 800 trained sailors to achieve one fully active ship, a second within 72 hours and possibly a third in 14 days. To get to 800 trained personal I expect that well over 900 possibly even 1000 personal would be required.
“ Yes it would have spare T45 and T23;vessels but would it have sufficient crew and helicopters to do other tasks?”
Currently we have more available Merlin’s than ships to put them on. Hence why one is on Maud(?) for CSG25.
Here’s a serious question. Who actually thinks conflict with Russia, China or North Korea will actually be a conventional engagement? If you want to be stupid enough to get into an actual UK/NATO/The world against these three we all know exactly what will happen.
It’s why MAD exists, we all die in that conflict. Forget your hull numbers and personnel and finances. Global powers (which the UK is although much diminished) get into conflict with each other and we all glow in the dark. All it takes is one and then the pebbles fall.
Yes it will be conventional.. Russia and the west were in an existential conflict for 45 years in which their forces were in almost constant conflict and they never dropped a nuclear weapon on each other.., nuclear weapons are existential weapons only… and war between the U.S. and china will be about influence in the western pacific and nether nation will fight to utter destruction…
Probably a conventional distant blockade against China is the most likely military scenario.
Beyond blockade no other conventional military action against China is possible without Russia on our side.
It’s too big and too isolated to invade or even bomb very well.
Proud article was a bizarre piece of misrepresentation.. considering Russia has not been able to build a surface combatant larger that 5400 tonnes since the end of the Cold War.. with only 4 4000 ton ASW frigates and 3 5000 ton vessels since the 1990s and one finished off soviet ship in that time the RN built the entire T23 fleet as well as the 6 T45s…even with the massive pause.. the RN in the late 2020s and 2030s will have built and runs a large array of 6000-8000 ton surface combatants.. something Russia is incapable of building. Russia is unable to build a carrier the Uk has 2 70,000 ton carriers.. Russia SSNs is only area of success are still a generation behind the Astute.. with Russia only having 5 of these SSGNs.. the rest of its 19 SSGNs and SSNs are 30-38 year old vessels..
As for the RN not being able to compete with Russia in the pacific. What was Proud even on about.. Russia is a Pacific power with pacific ports..clearly the RN are a European navy could never compete in the pacific against a pacific power. It was a ridiculous statement and article. I suspect it was highly politically motivated p.