Yes, it's true that those have to be redundant and damage resistant but traditionally on warships those things are exactly that. Coming back to the USS Missouri (because it's the ship I know best) I can tell you that just about anything worth doing on our ship can be done from 3 different places (sometimes more). And pretty much all of the critical systems are located in well-protected areas of the ship.

The British have been designing, building and operating warships for centuries - they had one of the best Navies on the ocean when the United States was just a gleam in George Washington's eye. I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing and that they'll make the critical systems hardened and redundant.

I'm a little surprised that these ships are intended to be conventionally powered. I realize that nuclear power brings its own set of problems, but it also has a lot of advantages -- for example not having to worry about fuel consumption en route to the theater (or theatre in this case, I guess) of operations.

-Coach-