Admiral Sir Julian Oswald said to the Defence Committee in 1989, "in order to capitalise on the really very exciting and important development of towed arrays, we had to get them to sea as soon as we could. The only sensible, cost-effective option open to us was to take some relatively older ships - the "Leanders" - and convert them quickly to the towed array. We have done that with great success, and the peacetime patrols have achieved some remarkable results, but there has been a price to pay because of the age of those ships."