Many have criticized the Royal Navy for not doing more to assist the U.S. against Iran, even after Iranian missiles hit an RAF base on Cyprus. But Mark Felton tells us the reason why, just as he did last year with The Navy With More Admirals Than Warships: The Royal Navy is so radically shrunk that it’s already inadequate even for the tasks it’s already assigned to carry out.
“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.”
It’s been a sad decline for what was once the biggest and best navy in the world. But Britain’s political class has made the decision that they were rather hand out generous welfare benefits to unassimilated Muslim illegal aliens than fund an adequate navy…
This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2026 at 6:25 PM and is filed under Military, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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9 Responses to ““The Shocking State Of Britain’s Navy In 2026””
Britain is not yet an Islamic nation. Trending that direction for sure. So that is a good point.
The problem was the decline from a Empire to a Common wealth. Under the Common wealth nations that were part of the empire had right of return into the British Isles. Britain should have given independence without right of return .They could have refused the ingress of huge numbers of Pakistanis which massively change the demographics of Britain.
Though I liked Queen Elizabeth this is her legacy regrettably.
The once legendary Imperial War Museum just dumped Lord Ashcroft’s massive collection of Victoria Crosses (VCs) and George Crosses (GCs) for ‘Exploring LGBTQ+ Stories in Times of Conflict’.
““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.”
snip
“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.”
From Wikipedia: At the start of World War II, the Royal Navy was the strongest navy in the world, with the largest number of warships built and with naval bases across the globe it had over 15 battleships and battlecruisers, 7 aircraft carriers, 66 cruisers, 164 destroyers and 66 submarines. With a massive merchant navy, a third of the world total, the British also dominated shipping. The Royal Navy fought in every theatre from the Atlantic, Mediterranean, freezing Northern routes to Russia and the Pacific Ocean.
1939, the year Prince Philip entered military service until his death in 2021, marked a steady decline in British sea power until they became the 3rd-rate navy they are today. To squander such an inheritance in the span of one man’s lifetime is without historic precedent.
The glory of Camelot hath departed and “Hollow, hollow, hollow is all joy”.
This is quite the bookend to Lloyd’s of London choosing to stop being the world’s premier shipping insurer. It’s almost as though Britain has decided the best way to stop the wave of immigration is to stop being a place people might want to emigrate to.
If wars were won by feasting,
Or victory by song,
Or safety found in sleeping sound,
How England would be strong!
But honour and dominion
Are not maintained so.
They’re only got by sword and shot,
And this the Dutchmen know!
The moneys that should feed us
You spend on your delight,
How can you then have sailor-men
To aid you in your fight?
Our fish and cheese are rotten,
Which makes the scurvy grow–
We cannot serve you if we starve,
And this the Dutchmen know!
Our ships in every harbour
Be neither whole nor sound,
And, when we seek to mend a leak,
No oakum can be found;
Or, if it is, the caulkers,
And carpenters also,
For lack of pay have gone away,
And this the Dutchmen know!
Mere powder, guns, and bullets,
We scarce can get at all;
Their price was spent in merriment
And revel at Whitehall,
While we in tattered doublets
From ship to ship must row,
Beseeching friends for odds and ends–
And this the Dutchmen know!
No King will heed our warnings,
No Court will pay our claims–
Our King and Court for their disport
Do sell the very Thames!
For, now De Ruyter’s topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet–
And this the Dutchmen know!
Britain is not yet an Islamic nation. Trending that direction for sure. So that is a good point.”
Islam is now the second most popular religion in the UK, surpassing Catholicism and all non Anglican rites. Britain has 85 Sharia Law Courts, disguised as “Councils”. They have polygamy. People go to prison for offending Islamists.
Do you really want an Islamic state to have a capable Navy?
Britain is not yet an Islamic nation. Trending that direction for sure. So that is a good point.
The problem was the decline from a Empire to a Common wealth. Under the Common wealth nations that were part of the empire had right of return into the British Isles. Britain should have given independence without right of return .They could have refused the ingress of huge numbers of Pakistanis which massively change the demographics of Britain.
Though I liked Queen Elizabeth this is her legacy regrettably.
The once legendary Imperial War Museum just dumped Lord Ashcroft’s massive collection of Victoria Crosses (VCs) and George Crosses (GCs) for ‘Exploring LGBTQ+ Stories in Times of Conflict’.
Decline is a choice.
““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.”
snip
“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.”
From Wikipedia: At the start of World War II, the Royal Navy was the strongest navy in the world, with the largest number of warships built and with naval bases across the globe it had over 15 battleships and battlecruisers, 7 aircraft carriers, 66 cruisers, 164 destroyers and 66 submarines. With a massive merchant navy, a third of the world total, the British also dominated shipping. The Royal Navy fought in every theatre from the Atlantic, Mediterranean, freezing Northern routes to Russia and the Pacific Ocean.
1939, the year Prince Philip entered military service until his death in 2021, marked a steady decline in British sea power until they became the 3rd-rate navy they are today. To squander such an inheritance in the span of one man’s lifetime is without historic precedent.
The glory of Camelot hath departed and “Hollow, hollow, hollow is all joy”.
This is quite the bookend to Lloyd’s of London choosing to stop being the world’s premier shipping insurer. It’s almost as though Britain has decided the best way to stop the wave of immigration is to stop being a place people might want to emigrate to.
The Dutch in the Medway
Rudyard Kipling
If wars were won by feasting,
Or victory by song,
Or safety found in sleeping sound,
How England would be strong!
But honour and dominion
Are not maintained so.
They’re only got by sword and shot,
And this the Dutchmen know!
The moneys that should feed us
You spend on your delight,
How can you then have sailor-men
To aid you in your fight?
Our fish and cheese are rotten,
Which makes the scurvy grow–
We cannot serve you if we starve,
And this the Dutchmen know!
Our ships in every harbour
Be neither whole nor sound,
And, when we seek to mend a leak,
No oakum can be found;
Or, if it is, the caulkers,
And carpenters also,
For lack of pay have gone away,
And this the Dutchmen know!
Mere powder, guns, and bullets,
We scarce can get at all;
Their price was spent in merriment
And revel at Whitehall,
While we in tattered doublets
From ship to ship must row,
Beseeching friends for odds and ends–
And this the Dutchmen know!
No King will heed our warnings,
No Court will pay our claims–
Our King and Court for their disport
Do sell the very Thames!
For, now De Ruyter’s topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet–
And this the Dutchmen know!
Britain is not yet an Islamic nation. Trending that direction for sure. So that is a good point.”
Islam is now the second most popular religion in the UK, surpassing Catholicism and all non Anglican rites. Britain has 85 Sharia Law Courts, disguised as “Councils”. They have polygamy. People go to prison for offending Islamists.
Britain is an Islamic nation. France is, too.
This is good
Less target for the US to contend with after the UK officially becomes the anchor of the north Atlantic caliphate
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