It comes down to parking spots.

The British CVF’s are never going to have to worry about this we never load out a carrier the way it should be. Still want it to have emals and have the following on board at all times (government directive if needed) 33 F-35C 3 Hawkeye and 4 Merlins. Gimmie that and you would have one happy camper. Sod strike carrier I want fleet carrier with the ability to cross deck with US and French Carriers.

Indeed.

It’ll be interesting to see if they do eventually get the full 18 FREMM & 10 OPV desired.

I note that it refers to the OPVs as Sirio-class. Sirio & her sister ship are a cheaper semi-civilian variant of the Comandante class, for coast guard duties. Lighter weapons, lower-power engines, no helicopter hangar (but keeping the deck & handling facilities).

Its a nice Flag Carrying ship to have. C3 basically.

If they did get the Full 18 They would be in the top 10 probably of world navies. Their sub situation though requires Nuclear power to get them into the top teir.

I always wonder why BAE aren’t looking at changing the Hawk to offer a super sonic version. I know it would take some investment but surely its worth it.

They have quite a few F-15Is already.

F-15’s are not GR4’s and they couldnt do the same job.

I dnot believe they will buy all of that – but if they did they would be well on the way to being on the of the leading navies in the world.

You never know though with thier co-op with china on carrier pilots – I would’nt be suprised if the Foch ends up with a ski jump.

whos harrier was it?

How about going to CATOBAR and funding a naval BAe Taranis and Mantis (AESA AWACS, EW). Couple that with a naval R1 sentinel for battlefield management. That way there won’t be a problem with deck space limiting the number of aircraft.

UCAVs can be flown aboard as attrition replacements and there won’t be any need for combat search and rescue helicopters.

Do we have the bandwidth to be able to do all of that. The more we talk about doing this sort of thing the more we are going to need to look at the number of Sats we have in the sky