Good post. Vice Admiral Tod if a true professional and made a lot of excellent points, let me highlight one.
How else could you get the capability to the place that you want it, that is the question. You cannot rely always on host nation support, it frequently comes it always takes time to set up host nations support and certainly in the Gulf we were very lucky we did get host nation support but what a long time it took to be able to build up that capability. What you've got in the aircraft carrier is the capability already there. You can put in the right mix of aeroplanes it maybe in today's terms the Harrier GR7's from the air force and the FA2s from the Navy. You can put in Chinooks. You can put in helicopters of all different types. You can put in with our amphibious shipping. You can put in soldiers you can put in tanks and warriors that we have been hearing about today. That is a huge capability which is mobile and deployable. Yes, of course it is vulnerable and here you have got to take a risk is it actually worth deploying that capability for the returns that you are likely to get from it? And it is all as all war is a matter of risk so don't think of it as investment in something that will go to the bottom its not its investment in success its investment in capability..
Now, I pay a lot of attention to what Vice Admiral Tod says and almost none to the out of date, ill-informed journalistic drivel I've read on this subject of late.