All you see is what you want to see.

That goes equally for you

All of the political comment doesn’t bear scrutiny. The reality is (as you well know) that only some of the cabinet and a few others, support the carriers.

There are 650 members of parliament in the UK, have you polled a representative sample of them? I rather suspect you haven’t, so this is rather a silly proposition, equally as silly as your assertion that the labour party would cancel them if it could, that’s the party that ordered them only 3 years ago.

The vast majority (and I do mean nearly everyone) do not.

Again, how many have you actually asked or even heard to say they would do this? This is blatantly just you’re opinion presented as fact.

We all know that.

No you think you know, not the same thing.

aeroplane enthusiasts

Why do you keep using this term?

Funny, when I suggested something similar in response to your original comment your said was that it was nonsense
This doesn’t even make any sense

Okay since you seem to have trouble grasping it I’ll explain it to you again: your argument is that the UK doesn’t need aircraft carriers because all the conflicts its used them in were ones of choice. Unfortunately all of the conflicts within this peroid were conflicts of choice which means that if we take your ‘logic’ to its conclusion we didn’t need any of the equipment that we used in those conflicts, and in fact don’t really need the armed forces either since we only use those out of choice. It’s not an opinion that I hold personally but there are plenty of people that do.

There is no “ideal” force structure. It depends on our abilities and our finances. I fully accept (as I think I’ve said) that in terms of purely national self defence, one could argue that virtually all assets are unnecessary, given that there is no obvious threat to the UK. But at the same time, this argument also applies to the carrier.

If you can’t see the similarities between the two statements then I think it’s best we leave any discussion there.

and other than that I can’t see too much else that we can provide that the rest of Europe can’t
I don’t think I ever suggested that Britain’s contributions should be of a unique nature. That obviously isn’t a pre-requisite.

And yet our allies seem to be suggesting that they should be unique.

I think that it ended from your point of view on page 1, we could try to rekindle it by you answering a simple question:

The carriers get cancelled and the MOD withdraws from exped warfare and starts to redefine itself based on a purely defence stance much in line with what you have suggested, what does your ideal UK force structure look like? In short where does all the money the MOD is saving going to go instead?

The facilities for reinforcing the number of fast jets at Mount Pleasant already exist, there are 16 fast jet shelters there, I would imagine the weapons and fuel storage facilities are also aized to accomodate a force up to the 16 fast jets as well. Of course, the actual stores of weapons and fuel currently there are probably more in keeping with the current size of the fj force.

Looks like an ‘apples and oranges’ comparison earlier. The only valid modern comparisons for CVF – now that it will be flying CTOL aircraft using CATOBAR – are the US CVNs and the French Charles de Gaulle.

(The Invincible class were originally ‘sold’ as through-deck cruisers, so they had to have substantial ‘islands’, in case anyone thought they might be aircraft carriers by the back-door ;))

So the ‘two islands solution’ is probably a typical committee compromise between the American way and the French way, the latter having to be factored in because of the expected Anglo-French cooperation on carriers.

The 2 islands idea dates back to the 1960s, it was considered for the CVA.

All highly debatable (on and on and on) I know but there’s one thing that you’ve suggested that I think may be simply untrue: the political skill that the RN possesses compared to the other forces. Really? Everything I’ve ever come across is that the RN is notoriously, appallingly dire at both politics and self-promotion (inasmuch as those two things are different…).

Especially so compared to the RAF.

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.

Every operation we’ve been involved in during that time was an operation of choice, by your reckoning we don’t need any armed forces then, you’re arguement is nonsense.