Please will someone tell me when a Carrier will justify itself in war? I have still to find a realistic scenario.
If the aircraft are more than 100 miles off the coast then they will need AAR (based reasonably locally), in which case you could base the ac at the same place as the AAR ac, so no need for a carrier. If the carrier needs to be less than 100 miles off-shore, then it is probably too dangerous to put a 3 Billion pound asset in that position...so why buy it in the first place???
Op PALLISER (I think that is the correct one) and the show of force air assault into Sierra Leone from Ocean parked OTH. Nuff said. May not have been a war per se, but carriers are all about power projection, and that was power projection.