RFA Lyme Bay or HMS Lyme Bay ?
 

An interesting development from the latest defence review; changing the role of RFA Lyme Bay to that of littoral command ship, a role she (and other Bays) were pretty much doing already, however with a permanent new build hangar and probable additional weapons / sensors will she slip into RN ownership?

With the proposed changes and cost eliminations, I suppose we should be grateful to the Whitehall Desk Jockeys that they haven't sold her off already and proposed to charter a laid up container ship or cruise liner. The way things are going we will have one rating with a laptop fighting the enemy. He might be all alone but he will have the most up to date, potent kit to destroy the oncoming hoards of enemy troops armed with catapults and machetes that are so last Century, but highly effective as proven by the Viet Cong who saw off the "superior" French and American armies.

I was interested to see the Admiral, who accepted a’slight’ Dip in the number of surface combatants, during the increase in the size of the overall fleet, as 2 frigates were disposed of before the new (naturally) more potent vessels come into being.
This pre-supposes that they will built in a timely fashion, unlike the A Class submarines, which will see the first of class being retired just in time for the last of the new builds completes.
I will also be interested to see where the matelots to man2 carriers and all these new ships will come from, when recruitment continues to fall. Although I did read somewhere that the higher ranked officers would be taking pay cuts to cover the improved rates of pay for junior ranks.
So whilst we will have plenty of people to crew the ships, there may be another dip in the number of more senior, experienced crew.
Maybe some of the 10000 troops being chopped may consider a career afloat

Nick, I believe recruitment is at an all time high, so much so that Raleigh is at capacity, two additional establishments are running Rating new entry training, Collingwood and BRNC Dartmouth. One of the few positives of Covid. Obviously it will take time to fully train the recruits, however I believe both QE and POW are fully manned.

Following on from your point about RFA/HMS Lyme Bay, I see the Americans are suffering a similar state of flux. In the lat3st issue of Warship World Pictorial, there is a photo of USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (phew!) which was formerly the USNS ditto!
Aside from the prefix, what would have caused the reallocation, aside from crew? It cannot be armament, as I see RFA Fort Victoria , and other RFAs are often armed?