This offer was declined by the British government. Possible reasons for this included the facts that (1) The Leanders in RN service were past their prime (2) HMNZS Canterbury had had little updating since its completion in 1971 (3) It had dated, slow processing radar (4) It was not yet fitted with UK or US sourced chaff decoy systems (5) Its crew lacked practice in using them (6) Its crew had little Atlantic experience operating against Soviet naval vessels which might be observing in the South Atlantic (7) Only four Leanders, HMS Argonaut , , HMS Minerva, and participated in the conflict; Bacchante joined the task group in the last week. The British government suggested as a less-controversial alternative that Muldoon send RNZN frigates to relieve the British frigate squadron in the Persian Gulf for Falkland duties. It was a difficult deployment with long stints at sea and infrequent runs ashore in very foreign ports for the crews. However they did feel closer to the Cold War action seeing significant Soviet warships and "Bear" surveillance aircraft. Canterbury was built with a surplus 1960's RN Type 177 sonar, tuned for the Persian Gulf. The British MoD refused to fit the US Edo sonars (also planned for an RAN version of the Type 21 frigate rejected by the Australian Government in 1968) and the NZ government - on cost grounds - rejected the new Doppler 184M sonars fitted to HMS Apollo, Achilles and Diomede being built alongside Canterbury in the Yarrow yard The rather dated solid state sensors fitted were finally replaced as totally obsolescent, in the delayed mid life refit of the Canterbury between Nov 1987 and June 1990 costing $73 million. The fit was essentially similar to preceding refit of its sister broad beam, HMNZS Wellington, except Canterbury was not fitted with extra fuel tanks as RNZN and RN experience confirmed the modification difficult, dirty and expensive, on middle aged Leanders. The 1991 audit office review of the refit raised some issues, over the cost and need, for new 'long range' air surveillance, LWO8 radar, but lacked the background to assess the relevance of maintaining the Leander frigates, historical role, as a fleet radar picket for operating with the RN fleet or whether the 4.5 guns and Seacat missiles were still useful, given RN reassessment and more accurate reporting, by 1991 of their failure as AA weapons in the Falklands