Listening to Commander Daniel's report, Arthur furrowed his brow and spotted a fairly obvious problem in the scale of the navy's deployment.
"Commander Daniel, why do we have fewer medium functional auxiliary warships than capital ships?" Arthur asked, somewhat puzzled.
The Pacific Fleet's size, in particular, could be summed up in four words: top-heavy and bottom-light.
The Pacific Fleet possessed a total of nine capital ships—3+4+2—but only seven medium auxiliary warships, led by destroyers.
Although some smaller vessels were not included in the statistics, that still could not explain why Australasia had so few small and medium warships.
"Your Majesty, have you forgotten the order you issued?" Daniel reminded him cautiously, his expression somewhat peculiar.
"Order? What order did I issue?" Arthur continued, utterly perplexed.
"Before our Navy construction plan began, Your Majesty, you said that we were to prioritize building our capital ships and submarines. Only after completing those warships were we to build medium warships and functional auxiliary warships," Daniel replied.
Arthur froze. He, too, remembered issuing such an order before naval construction began.
However, what Arthur had meant at the time was that capital warships should be built first, while a small portion of the production capacity was used to build various small and medium warships.
He had not expected the Navy Department and the shipyards to misconstrue his order, using all their production capacity to build capital ships and truly pushing all small and medium warships to the very end.
"How can our aircraft carriers guarantee their safety without destroyers and frigates to protect them?" Arthur asked in confusion, turning his gaze toward Commander Daniel. "Now that this problem has been discovered, why did no one remind me?"
An aircraft carrier's strength came not only from the various carrier-based aircraft it carried, but also from a