Edit (July 2022):
With a new Cold War/era of Violent Peace, the West must once again look to protect its sea lines of communication. Much has been written about carriers and their value to NATO, but this ARRSE thread is especially to the point as it discusses little else:
1977 US Congress Report: The US Sea Control Mission (carriers needed in the Atlantic for Air Defence and ASW - due to Maths/Physics/Geography)
Two major conclusions can be reached:
A. Sea Control (ASW, air defence/AAW, and anti surface warfare) is a major mission for the carrier and the carrier group. It was during the Second World War and the Cold War, and it is again now in a renewed era of peer adversaries and contested seas.
B. Sea Control is difficult to achieve without carrier aviation. Geography, Mathematics, and Physics show that attacking aircraft are best dealt with using fighters to kill the archers, not the arrows, and that the best chance of stopping anti ship missiles is to engage the launch platform. Similarly constant helicopter ASW operations are best supported by a big deck with multiple helicopters, and Physics shows that modern long range sonars need to work in conjunction with dipping sonar to achieve their potential - and vice versa.
Edit (November 2012):
Following the 2010 SDSR, when the politicians caused a lot of problems by retiring the Harrier something like a decade earlier than planned and leaving a gap without having British jets on British decks, it is worth looking at the various topics (including problems and potential solutions) discussed on this PPRuNe thread: Decision to axe Harrier is "bonkers"
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This thread is intended to be a focal point for discussing issues relating to the Royal Navy's
future aircraft carriers and the aircraft that they will carry (JCA/JSF/F35, Merlin, MASC and others). It is also intended to be a successor to the
Sea Jet thread and other Shar ones as well as various CVF threads including
this one.
I first became aware that planning was starting for the new carriers from the media back in 1995. Eleven years later the first steel has not been cut, is this a record? The same year I became aware of what is to the JSF/F35 project — including the STOVL version for the USMC and RN (the RAF came onboard later). Before the 1997 general election the Conservative Government committed themselves to building two new carriers, when the current Government was elected they said they would hold a wide ranging review of defence. This review, the SDR, committed the Government to building two new carriers, for entry into service in 2012 and 2015.
Since the SDR (which contained cuts for the RN in return for a promise of new carriers) many of the SDR commitments have been dropped. The 2004 cuts involved the RN losing roughly 20% of its front line strength, thousands of personnel and having virtually every major project cut, cancelled or delayed. At the time of writing CVF has not passed the main gate milestone.
On of the major frustration of this sort of debate is the fact that carriers are frequently labelled as a legacy of the Cold War, often by those who either are ignorant or those that have an agenda. This idea is untrue. In 1966 the Cold War was in full swing, yet Dennis Healy decided to scrap the carriers. In 1981 the Cold War was still going and tensions were rising, yet John Nott still saw the RN contribution to NATO as a legitimate area for cuts. The Cold War role of the RN was primarily focussed on ASW in the North Atlantic - including the CVS/Sea King/Sea Harrier. However, the end of the Cold War has seen British forces involved in a number of conflicts around the World, and this has included carrier deployments.
Perhaps the best open source of information on CVF etc is Richard Beedall's
Navy Matters, and in particular the following sections.
Carrier Strike
JCA
MASC
Where are we now? What do we need to do to make this a reality?
The Royal Navy’s Super-Carriers