All I think about when I see pic of the QE leaving Gib is "Give me a ping Vasili - One Ping Only..........."
At the end of the day, it's still one very big basket for an awful lot of very expensive eggs and some dubiety over the ability to man it and all of the support ships (and their capabilities) at the same time. I remain to be convinced that there is a practical use for them and a REAL justification for them as I'm still of the opinion that they came about as a Blair/Brown ego trip.
Can you imagine trying to justify a class of two ships where only one will ever get to go to sea at a time in a commercial operation?
I've had the opportunity over the past few years to watch QE & PoW take shape as I've gone to & from work, and while each is undoubtedly a very capable ship, I think, as a nation, we've lost the plot.
Instead of one very large capital ship (it's 2 hulls, but will only ever be one in use at a time), I think We (as one of the only 2 island nations in Europe) should have looked at series building a range of simple but robust frigate, destroyer and cruiser equivalents to reduce the number of admirals and captains that appear to be permanently desk-bound and increase the number of tasks that can be undertaken at once. After all if you send "The" Carrier, it looks like the best part of half of the remaining RN fleet will need to go with it, all to deal with one task. What happens to flying the flag and display the much vaunted "soft power" [with something to back it up] in the rest of the world?
It's not as if we can rely on the red duster to cover for the white ensign's absence - the days of the UK owned, flagged & manned fleets is gone.
I don't have a solution, I just have the feeling that there needs to be some serious re-thinking about what the extreme levels of technology that goes into the current & planned fleet actually gets us versus what we pay for it and how long we have to use it to get a return on the investment. I think the balance has moved too far away from simple, relatively cheap and flexible equipment that can be turned over every 10-15 years and too far into something horribly complicated, hugely expensive, of unproven capabilities and that needs to be kept in service for half a century to break even. I'd always go for basic technology run by a large number of flexible humans rather than the latest technology with a few humans on board in case the "CTRL+ALT+DEL" button needs to be pressed.
Feel free to disagree or support the above to your heart's content. I doubt there's a real answer anyway.