The video I made about the Royal Navy having more admirals than warships caused a bit of a stir online. It exposed a truth that many found hard to swallow: the once great Royal Navy has been reduced to such a state that it now employs more senior officers of flag rank than it has actual warships. A truly unthinkable situation, even thirty years ago. As Britain has been put through what generations of politicians call managed decline, the armed forces have been decimated alongside everything else.
This was thrown into sharp relief recently with the outbreak of the war with Iran, when Britain seemed incapable of dispatching at short notice even a single warship to defend one of its sovereign bases overseas, this one in Cyprus being attacked. So, in the interest of clarity, I decided to look closely at the current Royal Navy to determine exactly what state it is in as of March 2026. The first thing anyone must note is that it is too small. Former senior officers and defense analysts have been banging on about this for decades.
The Navy simply lacks sufficient ships to be an effective force any longer. The figures show this plainly. Currently, the Royal Navy has 63 commissioned ships, but of this number, only 25 are real fighting ships—that is, submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers, and frigates. The balance are support, patrol, and survey vessels, which, while armed, are not true fighting warships.
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. Plus, Britain is involved in a variety of defense tasks worldwide. Due to endless defense cuts, however, the Navy is hard-pressed to fulfill them all.
So, of the fighting ships in 2026, Britain possesses 10 submarines, two aircraft carriers, six destroyers, and seven frigates. A decade earlier, in 2016, the situation was not much better: 11 submarines, no aircraft carriers, six destroyers, and 13 frigates. Twenty years ago, in 2006, the fleet had nine submarines, three aircraft carriers, one helicopter carrier, 10 destroyers, and 13 frigates. And thirty years ago, in 1996, the Royal Navy had 17 submarines, three aircraft carriers, 15 destroyers, and 22 frigates.
It is generally agreed that the Royal Navy should still be this large, as the country’s defense commitments are basically the same as they were in 1996. So, roughly, the Royal Navy’s fighting fleet has been reduced by half in thirty years—yet it is just as busy as ever. Then there is the issue of redundancy. Ships require regular maintenance, and sometimes complete refits or updates that can take years.
This means that, at any one time, numbers of vessels will be doing nothing. You require sufficient vessels to make up the shortfall while still maintaining operational commitments. Sadly, as we will see, a good majority of the current fighting fleet is immobilized, undergoing refit or maintenance, with no spare ships available to cover these losses. A few months ago, I made a video about the parlous state of Britain’s seaborne nuclear deterrent.
We operate four Vanguard class ballistic missile submarines. 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-boats are requiring more frequent and longer refits and maintenance to stay in service. This 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. 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.
We can probably also surmise that of the remaining three, at least one must have had some kind of fault or maintenance issue during these periods, which probably left only two operational. These elderly boats are going to sea with serious maintenance issues or dangerous faults, simply because the continuous at-sea deterrent has to be maintained somehow. I would hazard a guess that gaps must have occurred in Britain’s continuous at-sea deterrent, though I doubt the Ministry of Defence or the government would ever admit to such a thing. 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. Let us examine this situation. HMS Astute is undergoing a mid-life revalidation 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 will not 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?
You see the point about redundancy. Five boats are out of service with nothing to cover them. Moving on to the aircraft carriers, 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.
But 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. Moving on to destroyers, 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.
HMS Dauntless is entering a three-month scheduled support period following return from deployment in the Pacific. HMS Diamond is doing likewise after a deployment to the Red Sea. And HMS Defender is at Portsmouth undergoing a 68 million pound upkeep and upgrade program. And what about the frigates, the workhorses 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 of service with no replacement.
And HMS Kent is undergoing deep maintenance at Devonport, where she has been 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 three aircraft carriers, 12 destroyers compared to six today, and 43 frigates compared to just seven today.
In 1982, the Royal Navy deployed the Falklands task force, which consisted of two aircraft carriers, eight 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. 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 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. Anyway, there it is in black and white. Check it out for yourself. You will be shocked.
It is said that if you stand beside the grave of Admiral Lord Nelson and listen carefully, you can actually hear him rotating at about 1,500 revolutions a minute.