
On the whole quite good
Nimrod is sunk cost, forget it, as to yachties amiss mid Atlantic - tough titty. Incidently the Nimrod R1s have/are being replaced by Rivet Joint (read the small print in the MoD paper). ASTOR is no loss, it started out in the early 1980s as a good idea from teeny weeny airways (AKA Army Air Corps) to get some small fixed wing aircraft with palletised mission loads, then the RAF got hold of it.
As to escorts, I reckon the admirals have been saying, 'PM, think what the Rep Tops will say when a Chinese SSN pops up in the Atlantic in a few years time' (assuming they aren't already there but no one's noticed). Escorts are also quite useful, if I understand it right the only enemy ships sunk since Suez by UK were by heli launched anti-ship msls from frigate based heli (FI and Gulf). Amusingly Herr Page seems to be ignorant of this. That said said, I agree that the suitable capability of a future frigate type ship (in the Nelsonian sense), affordable in useful numbers is a tricky one.
Harriers are absolutely no loss as a means of delivering firepower, the only positive thing that can be said for them is that they are better than nothing, but some might debate even that. Bugger all endurance/range, bugger all weapon load. They were introduced during the Cold War to enable the RAF to escape from the handfull of fixed bases in Germany, they absorbed a lot of resources (including Army signals and engineer regiments), end of Cold War made them redundant, even more than tanks. And in the Cold War they were little more than duty targets for the impressively integrated SGF air defences not forgetting the Spetnatz party. A lot of wasted money over many decades - the Army could have had decent attack heli decades ago.
The Army's reorg is basically that set out by Dannatt several years ago, problem then was that there weren't enough resources for 6 multi-role bdes, but there are for 5, each including a small regiment of tanks, some armoured infantry and a mix of 155 armd SP (with armour busting smart muniitons) and light artillery. Those that have read the MoD paper will have noted that FRES continues -'FRES UV will be the main vehicle for most infantry' with the recce version in the armoured recce units. The concept of the large multi-role brigades equipped for a wide range of operations is a good one, and also less wasteful than having specialised bdes, which is what almost every other army has.
Of course the touchy question of infantry battalion (probably no cavalry units and the others don't whinge) disbandment has been skipped for the moment. The least cost effective infantry are now the Gurkhas, they've been priced out of the market by well meaning people (think Ms L), but the Sultan of Brunei's contribution (he permanently hires a battalion) may yet save them.