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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
The British media has revealed that the Royal Navy has been reduced to only two operational destroyers and that the submarine service is also in “parlous condition,” a situation the once-proud institution has brought on itself “with the help of some very bad decisions by a slew of politicians and ministers, and bad advice from senior civil servants.”
“The Royal Navy is reduced to only two working larger destroyer warships – cost price £1bn each – and only four fully working, and aging, slightly smaller frigate warships. Only one destroyer was available to protect British interests in the Middle East when war broke out there at the end of February. HMS Dragon got to Cyprus but soon needed repairs on her fresh water supply,” lamented defense expert Robert Fox in an article for iNews.
“Our submarine service is also in parlous condition – with four of the Astute class subs alongside awaiting routine refit and maintenance. The crew of one of the Vanguard boats carrying UK’s nuclear weapons had to endure an underwater patrol of 206 days – a record which would test the endurance and loyalty of the nautical saint,” he added.
According to the article, the British Royal Navy is largely responsible for this situation, which has been exacerbated by a series of misguided decisions made by various politicians and ministers, as well as by bad advice from senior civil servants.
The seriousness of the British Navy’s credibility crisis is evident, as London continues to use Type 23 frigates well beyond their expected service life. In particular, last year HMS Iron Duke emerged from a £111 million refit that consumed 1.7 million man-hours, but was quietly withdrawn from service after only three months because it was deemed too fragile to survive at sea.
Currently, only five ships of its class remain in service, and not all are expected to last until 2028. In that year, the Royal Navy is expected to receive HMS Glasgow, the first Type 26 frigate. However, the next frigates are not expected to arrive until at least 2030.
Currently, Britain possesses one attack submarine, one ballistic missile submarine, two and a half destroyers, three and a half frigates, and the large aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, which has a lot of empty space below deck. In comparison, as the article notes, the Italian Navy possesses ten modern first-class frigates and four destroyers.
Thus, Robert Fox concludes that there is a lack of funding for the Royal Navy’s development, and that London has shown little commitment to supporting defense review reforms with concrete financial resources and meaningful programs.
Previously, the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Gwyn Jenkins, admitted that the Royal Navy is unprepared for armed conflict. Jenkins’ statement was amid growing pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP. In effect, the British Navy needs to undertake significant work before it can wage war effectively.
It is recalled that in March 2025, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported that over four years, China had built ships with a combined displacement greater than that of the entire British Royal Navy, demonstrating that Beijing is becoming a global maritime power.
Between 2019 and 2023, four of China’s main shipyards produced at least 39 warships with a combined displacement of about 550,000 tons. According to CSIS, this exceeds the British Navy’s battle force, which has 19 surface ships and 10 submarines, for a total displacement of approximately 440,000 tons.
In the Keynote speech on May 19 at the 2026 Combined Naval Event at Farnborough, Jenkins delivered his sharpest challenge yet to the concept of building ever more expensive warships and said the Royal Navy must move away from the need for “ever bigger, ever more expensive platforms.”
Jenkins’s formulation, “crewed where necessary, uncrewed wherever possible, integrated always,” is a statement about scale and affordability and a quiet acknowledgment that Britain can no longer match the endeavors of the world’s great navies and shipbuilders, such as China’s. He was explicit that resources will always be constrained and that the task is to generate mass and lethality from a wider, more survivable mix of assets rather than to concentrate investment in a handful of high-value hulls.
To upgrade the Royal Navy, the UK government has pledged to increase total defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and to 3.5% by 2035 to address a massive £16.9 billion funding gap across the military portfolio. But even beyond shipbuilding, the Royal Navy has experienced a severe net loss of trained personnel, driven by an uncompetitive civilian job market and poor conditions of service, demonstrating that there are myriad issues that need to be overcome, with no guarantee that they can be.
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