M2,
I'm afraid you've been too long in the AD world if you seriously think "that the loss of the Jag force would potentially have been worth retaining AMRAAM on the CVS".
Let USN F/A-18s, other people's AV-8B+s and land based F-15s, Tornados et al provide AMRAAM cover for the fleet - on the very rare occasions that it's needed. This hugely expensive Sea Harrier fleet (running costs exceed that of the Jaguar or F3 by a huge margin) can generate only a tiny number of inflexible and rarely needed FJ platforms, whereas the Jags have given useful service over and over again.
What can the Jag do that the SHar can't?
Well Damien B is being a bit of an over-sensitive prong, so to see one crucial advantage - eg reliability and serviceability you'd have to go to:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...hreadid=103021
for a start.
Then there is recce (and not just with an F95), TIALD (a better TIALD integration than on any other platform), PW II, PW3, Strafe, etc. and could do ASRAAM and real time recce at a tiny cost.