Mods please feel free to move this post to a new thread but I think that this is at least tangentially relevant.

Up front, my sympathies are very much with submarines and this may very well skew my logic. (Which raises the question of why I post on a Naval Aviation forum but I digress)

John Keegan (amongst others, but his has been the loudest voice) forcefully argued that skimmers are too vulnerable in a fight between evenly matched navies and thus that submarines will in the future have to take on more and more of the warship roles. Once upon a time all of the ‘This is what the world will be like in the Year 2000‘ style of books had as well as hover boots and cities in domes navies consisting of submarines and a handful of fast attack craft.

So what roles absolutely HAVE to be carried out by skimmers?
Launch and recovery of aircraft
Mass Troop transport
Fishery policing and protection*
(inc. smuggling and piracy patrols)

So what roles PROBABLY have to be carried out by skimmers?
Hydrography?
NGS?
Mine Warfare?
AAW?
Launch and recovery of UAVs?
C3?
T45 replacement?

What roles could be taken by boats?
Deep Land Attack
ASW
ASuW
Denial of access
Minelaying
C1?
C2?

Boats will be less visible, less vulnerable, scarier, have lower manning requirements, provide greater strategic deterrence (not just nukes but also in terms of ‘hmm we don’t KNOW where HMS Conqueror is so we have to be cautious in our planning‘)

But have less on-the-spot deterrence, ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE bang-up-to-date Hydrographic charts, are more expensive to purchase and are possibly more expensive to run, cannot be subcontracted to cheaper yards so easily

* can you imagine trying to board and inspect from an SSGT? No neither can I