don’t forget that the brits, french, spanish, germans, italians, dutch, aussies, americans and singaporeans are continuing to invest heavily in their SSN/K fleets! after all, the best defense against a submarine is another submarine.

there is also a general trend of improving ASW helicopter fleets.

it’s not like the Cold War times when the soviets would flood the atlantic with hordes of foxtrots charlies victors and oscars and NATO needed big ASW surface fleets to counter that.