Fleet Ready Escort.

This is coolbert:

How times have changed!

From a prior blog entry:

"the Grand Fleet [Royal Navy], totaling some 28 dreadnoughts and 9 battlecruisers"

That total of English capital ships at Jutland [1916] NOT inclusive of the entire Grand Fleet as deployed for battle, terribly arrayed!

And NOW, one hundred years later! [thanks to the Telegraph]

"No warships left defending Britain after Defence cutbacks"

"Defence cuts have left the stretched Royal Navy unable to provide an emergency standby ship to protect British waters for a month. The Navy normally provides a minimum coverage of a frigate or destroyer fulfilling the role of Fleet Ready Escort (FRE) in order to be able to respond quickly to a potential threat at home or abroad."

For a period of one month, the English not able to deploy a single frigate or destroyer in the role of Fleet Ready Escort, able to respond in an instant to defend the home islands or contiguous waters!! That armed known presence constantly at sea, defending the realm against any adversary, the RN lacking the wherewithal - - not one ship available for FRE duty!

"The shortage comes after the Government cut the navy's surface fleet to 19 frigates and destroyers in last year's defence review."

"It is believed the last time this happened was 1982 after every available ship left for the Falklands War."

The cost to build even ONE warship of the destroyer or frigate class now prohibitive, in the billions of dollars!  [one modern American destroyer at last count costs $3 billion brand new!] And the need for such defense is from what exactly, even in the mind of most cautious and wary admiral at the Admiralty?

NOT merely cost but the entire nature of naval warfare having changed so dramatically since 1916, one hundred years of progress rendering the technologies, methods, techniques and doctrines from the days of the battleship obsolete and this having been so for some time now too!

And Jellicoe would have responded to this situation in exactly what manner?

coolbert.