Its actually a well defended and advanced vessel and only the likes of the super powers and advanced forces could do much to it (who generally are our allies or somebody we would not pitch up against without many others in support).
The harsh reality is that a lot of our naval fleet spend a growing portion of their time on humanitarian activities and the modern ships actually have features as a design requirement to support this (the QECs being one of them).
Agreed
The fact is that Great Britain no longer has a world empire, with the needs to defend it and project international power. I am one who would love to see the Royal Navy doubled or even trebled to project our sea trade, which still accounts for 95% our country's trading.
But we also want first class NHS, Education, Policing and Health care services. These have to be paid for. As said, I would ideally like to see a much larger Royal Navy, like in the days of GB projecting it's power on the sea and being able to defend the Empire. Then the Government (of 1910) spent £64.9 million on Defence out of a total expenditure of £147.5 million. Would the public of today be willing to pay for that proportion of Defence in the UK's total expenditure?
It would be great to see again the obvious power of The Grand Fleet that consisted of 28 Dreadnoughts, including 5 Super Dreadnoughts, plus 9 Battlecruisers, and another 114 assorted pre-dreadnoughts, cruisers, frigates, destroyers , and others deployed in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. The Royal Navy also had other ships in the Mediterranean and elsewhere on the Earth's oceans. But do we really need such numbers, with each modern warships with such destructive firepower, and, again, would we pay for them?