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And yet it was reported earlier this week that the Royal Navy currently has no attack boats available for deployment.

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A good article - however as a USS Navy Officers doing a Master degree on the defence of Norway and the Northern Flank noted in 1985:

To achieve sea control in a given area of the world's oceans, a naval force must be capable of exercising control over its environment above, below, and on the surface of the sea. This multi-environment aspect of sea control is often ignored or misunderstood by people who are are unfamiliar with naval strategy. It is for this reason that submarines are not by themselves considered to be sea control platforms because of their inability to control the airspace above the surface. On the other hand, the modern aircraft carrier with attack, fighter, and ASW aircraft embarked is considered the ideal sea control platform because of its ability to achieve control in all warfare environments. When the aircraft carrier is combined with a powerful array of surface and submarine escorts, it becomes the most potent sea control force in the world.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA165485.pdf

From a much larger discussion about Sea Control:

https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threads/1977-us-congress-report-the-us-sea-control-mission-carriers-needed-in-the-atlantic-for-air-defence-and-asw-due-to-maths-physics-geography.301236/

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How do we retain and expand the submarine workforce? This is surely going to be one of the major challenges before anything else if submarines are to be prioritised.

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