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Furthermore, there will be a window of around two years between 2018 and 2020 where the Royal Navy might have no anti-surface guided missiles at all: the helicopter-launched Sea Skua missile has a planned retirement date of March 2017, and its replacement Sea Venom missile isn't due to roll out until 2020.

The Harpoon missile system was originally developed by McDonnell Douglas in the US in the 1970s. It has been updated various times since then and is now produced by Boeing. Harpoons are sea-skimming subsonic (~530mph) cruise missiles with a solid fuel booster and a turbojet engine for cruising. They are guided missiles that are given an initial target when launched, steered towards its destination with inertial guidance, and then a built-in active radar homing system is used to find an appropriate target. Each missile costs about $1.2 million—costly, but fairly average for a cruise missile. The Harpoon is roughly analogous to the French-made Exocet missile; most of the world's navies use one or the other.

All of the Royal Navy's frigates currently use Harpoon missiles, as do three of the Navy's newer Type 45 Daring class destroyers. Without Harpoon missiles, all of these ships will instead have to rely on a single 4.5-inch Mk8 naval gun—the same type of gun used by the UK's navy since 1938—for anti-ship and anti-surface combat. The 4.5-inch gun only has a range of 17 miles and can't be used for over-the-horizon warfare, meaning the Royal Navy may be in a spot of bother if it squares up against a better-equipped fleet.

The logic behind the decision is probably predicated on the amount of cash currently being ploughed into the UK's two new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, which are due to set sail in 2018, and development of the new Dreadnought class nuclear deterrent submarines (construction of the first one is meant to begin right around now, in fact). It would also be rather unusual for the Royal Navy to be put in a situation where it needs anti-ship missiles, or long-range anti-surface missiles—and even more unusual to be in such a situation and not have the US Navy around to help out.

If the Royal Navy is facing budget cuts, it may have simply been a case of choosing to spend what money it does have on keeping the UK's ever-shrinking fleet afloat, rather than equipping ships with rarely used and very expensive missiles. Being completely unable to engage other navies for at least a few years must be a pretty bitter pill to swallow, though.

A Royal Navy spokesperson had very little to say on the matter: "All Royal Navy ships carry a range of offensive and defensive weapons systems. Backed by a rising defence budget and a £178 billion equipment plan, upgrade options to all our weapons are kept under constant review."

It's also worth noting that, if a war did break out between 2018 and 2020, I'm sure the Navy would continue to use the Harpoons even if their planned retirement date had been exceeded.

Now read about the USS Zumwalt's similar problems