High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! At the beginning of the 1990s the Royal Navy was a force designed for the Cold War: with its three small aircraft carriers and a force of anti-submarine frigates and destroyers, its main purpose was to search for – and in the event of an actual declaration of war, to destroy – Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic. The 1982 Falklands War proved a need for the Royal Navy to maintain an expeditionary capability.