One very interesting article on Type 82 is Innovation and Surface Ships: The Type 82 Destroyer and the Future Fleet Working Part, published in the academic journal 'The Mariner's Mirror in 2013.
Since this is probably closed to most non-academic people, I'll post a liberal quote from the most relevant section that refers to the arugemnts and ideas on this thread in relation to a stretched Type 82 and the mix of systems and the single vs. two hull argument.
In August 1966 the FFWP had concluded that it would ‘be essential to build, as quickly as possible, not more than four Type 82 destroyers: these will provide the only means of getting SEA DART, Type 988 radar and Ikara – on which large sums have been committed – to sea in the early 1970’s [sic]’. Yet by October the enthusiasm had waned. In his October letter to the Secretary of State, the Minister (RN) stated that the Navy recommended keeping the Type 82 procurement to one ship, instead of the six projected in the Long-Term Costings; that a cruiser be developed from an enlarged Type 82 design, which would replace the Tiger class by 1976 and ‘provide command facilities, the control of R.A.F. aircraft and [carry] A.S.W. and reconnaissance helicopters’; and that Sea Dart be deployed on a new destroyer design ‘to come into service in 1973’.39 The Navy believed that in an age of missiles which can be fired from ships and submarines as well as from aircraft, it should be our aim to keep our own surface ships as small in size as is consistent with the capability required of them. It is with these thoughts in mind that we have recommended…that the Type 82 programme should be curtailed, and the design developed on the one hand into a smaller destroyer, and, on the other, into a cruiser whose size should be kept to a minimum.
The fleet now required command and control capabilities in one class, but the Type 82 was too small to meet this requirement. The Navy therefore proposed to enlarge the Type 82 design quickly, to retain the air defence system and replace Ikara with a helicopter ‘to provide a substantial ASW capability and surface tactical reconnaissance’.The operational and technological merits of the Type 82 were dissipating across various classes. What is more, the operational reasoning applied now should also have been applied by the FFWP, which nevertheless seemed to have valued the Type 82 precisely because all its systems were integrated, combined significant and unique technological and operational capabilities in one major surface unit, and would thus allow implementing the FFPW’s declared rationale for redesigning the fleet for single or small group deployments.
By January 1967 the Navy’s argument on the future building policy had gained further shape. In order to put the new justifications in context, it should be recalled that the role described for the Type 82 in 1965 has not been restricted to the support of carrier task forces, that the FFWP had been tasked with designing the post-carrier fleet, and that the concept of operations it applied, when urging that four of the class should be built speedily in August 1966, had already accounted for the shift away from task force operations and towards peace-keeping with single units or small groups. Now the Navy Board emphasized exactly the same shift as the FFWP had declared, but the Board argued that this had ‘changed the required weapon “mix” for the 1970s’; that is the loss of carriers made it necessary to deploy command and control facilities, direction for ‘[RAF] fixed-wing maritime aircraft’ and ‘large ASW helicopters’ in other hulls, and the deployment of helicopters in all major warships being paramount. As the Type 82 could not be adapted without a major redesign effort, it was necessary to design new types of ship and to meet their cost by economizing on the Type 82.
In what the Board described as ‘this new situation’ and in contradiction to the previous rationale of the economies of deploying all the Type 82 systems in one hull, it suggested that the most economical way of ‘deploying the new “mix” of Type 82 weapon systems’ whilst simultaneously ‘providing for the “cruiser” functions described above’ would be not to design an escort cruiser, to complete the first Type 82, to ‘develop the ships of the follow-on Type 82 programme into cruisers by the addition of command and helicopter operating facilities’, and to advance a Sea Dart medium destroyer programme of no more than 3,500 tons, rather than the previously planned 4,500 tons. The first Type 82 should be retained because she had already been ordered, she would be a useful addition to the County class, her weapon systems, which she would share with the new cruisers and destroyers, would make her an important ‘lead in’, and the Navy could gain useful experience with the design and iron out teething troubles with the new weapon systems before they were fitted to
the new ships. Her design had at any rate been necessary as at the time no other available hull would have been able to deploy Sea Dart and, if she were not completed, she would have to be replaced at a later date with an additional Sea Dart destroyer.
Finally, as the costs of the ship had been rising and ‘in view of the changed background’ it would be necessary to economize on both the class as well as the follow-on designs. Of the Type 82 systems the cruiser was to receive Sea Dart and the Type 988 radar. Although the Board conceded that this piece of equipment was very expensive and highly complex, it decided against alternatives because the development was already advanced, alternatives would entail time and cost penalties, and the programme had been revised to ensure greater financial control. It would also receive ADA, but in a lighter version because there was no need to integrate the operation of Ikara into the software. The destroyer would also be equipped with Sea Dart and ADA, but the choice of radar remained open. Given the money already spent on the Type 82 systems, the Board recommended that the programmes were continued, but proposed a slow down of the Type 988 radar programme in the expectation that this would ensure a more reliable fit, and the deployment of Ikara in HMS Bristol, whilst leaving open the option to build an Ikara version of the destroyer. On 13 February 1967 the Secretary of State for Defence, Denis Healey generally consented to limiting the procurement of Type 82s to one ship, although he did raise a warning that the decision to order a major weapon system at the time of a significant defence review had been somewhat unwise. The Navy’s desire to cancel all further orders after the FFWP had elevated the Type 82 to such a core position in the new fleet is puzzling even if one accounts for the coincidence of the unit cost rising significantly with the renewed pressure to cut the defence budget.45 It raises the question of whether the Type 82 was too innovative and capable as an individual unit for the type of fleet the FFWP had designed, and whether that fleet was perhaps not quite as novel as was previously announced.
