Well technically the two islands taking up less deck space then one is not referring to American carriers. Traditionally the Island on British carriers are huge taking up a significant proportion of the side of the carrier deck.

Ark Royal

Illustrious

Now look at the BAE proposed design:

Versus the Thales design:

For the Royal navy the Thales design did represent a significant saving in deck space whilst solving the issue of ducting the funnel for the Gas Turbines. Remember the Americans Super carriers are Nuclear Powered meaning they don’t have to duct any gasses through funnels or install intakes. Its worth looking at an image of a Wasp class LHD as you will find a large Island in comparison to the deck size due to among other things the need to duct a funnel. In the end the twin island solution was the most attractive solution to the packaging problems you have with a non nuclear carrier for the RN.

Well it is a question we have debated many times, we can presume a significant amount of machinery was installed when the plug was pulled on Varyag construction. On the other hand that machinery had pretty much zero preservative maintenance as she lay along side, add to that whatever the Ukrainians ripped out as condition for her sale to the Chinese Casino company;) and I lean towards installation of new boilers, steam turbines and pipework. Maybe some stuff was found to be adequate for overhaul and retained, its not as if this kind of work hasn’t been done before. Many ships have had their machinery and boilers replaced during their life including warships, add to that the known reliability problems with the machinery installed in the AK and I think it makes sense for China to install similar but indigenous propulsion then mess around with whatever was left installed.

1982 – Falklands War Hermes, Invincible
1993 to 95 – Bosnia Operation deny flight and operation deliberate force, Invincible
1998 to 99 – Southern Iraq Operation Bolton, Invincible and Illustrious
1999 – Yugoslavia Operation Allied Force, Invincible
2000 – Sierra Leone Operation Palliser, Invincible and Ocean
2003 – Iraq GW2, Ark Royal

All conflicts of choice, other than 1982. Point is, not one of these had any direct defence significance to the UK, other than the Falklands. Anyone can understand how carrier power can play an important part in operations and provide political clout, but in terms of “needing” carriers, they’ve been redundant since 1982. For the future, the meagre amount of power projection which the new carrier will provide is nothing more than a token gesture. It has absolutely nothing to contribute towards the defence of the UK and is actually causing significant damage to our defence capability. It’s a Navy-driven pet project, like so many which we’ve had over many decades. You can look at that in terms of person bias if you like, but before you do that, read the history books.

Well why didn’t you say so in the first place, what your advocating is moving towards a self defence only doctrine. Disband most of the armed forces bring them under one command and call them a “Self defence force”. Pretty much exactly what Belgium actually did. OK its a lot cheaper but it also means that your not a global power. The thing is the government and the general public still want to be a player on the global stage hence all those conflicts of choice around the world!

If you want to be a global power you NEED a global power projection capability. You need to be able to put aircraft over any country in the world or land troops anywhere in the world. To put troops down in any country in the world you need transport ships, those transport ships need to be protected hence you need a carrier…QED.

But if you want to be the next Belgium of the world then great lets get on with REALLY scrapping all our armed forces! Then when there is a crisis and the public and press are baying for the politicians to do something as happened with those other conflicts of choice you can go out in front of parliament and say “sorry its not for the benefit of our self defence”…

Well not quite – the claim is that there will be six operational aircraft by then, so we can all sleep safely in our beds.

It was fascinating to hear the claptrap that the MoD spews out. Summing-up, we establish that the original purchase of two carriers for 3.5bn is now going to give us one carrier for twice that figure, with six operational aircraft by 2020. Then the MoD also accepts that we haven’t required a carrier capability for many years and are willing to manage without a capability for years to come. But – absurdly – we should re-acquire the capability at unknown cost, many years into the future. All this despite a 38bn MoD debt and an additional 7bn cut.

You couldn’t make it up…

Sorry Chox I have disagree, you probably will be getting that vibe from my other comments on this thread. Whilst there is much I criticise about the MOD in the case of the carriers the fault for cost overrun lies nearly entirely with the previous Labour government! It was there dithering, messing about and delaying of decisions that pushed the costs up on this carrier project.

Industry and the Navy had started to plan for a replacement to the Invincible class during the 1990’s. British Aerospace planned to build those carriers in the most suitable yard for this Harland & Wolf with its huge construction basin and Goliath Cranes. Labour asked industry to bid for and design these carriers in 1998 with an intended MAIN GATE of 2003! Gordon Brown wouldn’t even allow funding to be released unless the unsuitable yard Rosyth was used and they spent years delaying decisions and putting things off until Brown became Prime Minister and he realised that if he didn’t get it main gated there was a chance that the next government would cancel damaging Rosyth!

If Labour had kept to the schedule QE would be in the fitting out basin, PoW would be deep in construction and they would both be billions of pounds cheaper!

What really frustrates me is how the MP’s constantly attacking the MOD representative and Admiral not making certain decisions or delaying things when it wasn’t their fault! It was the MP’s who controlled those decisions!