FB11,
When I was talking about a viable, effective, deployable FJ with guaranteed costs of ownership, I was talking about Typhoon.
I'm not against JCA, per se, though I think that the jury's out on F-35 for the UK. Will we get a full standard aircraft? Will that aircraft be a poor man's F-22 or less? Is Riccione right about the F/A-22 (Stealth, supercruise, etc.)? Will we get what we need to be able to maintain, modify and upgrade it? What will it cost? (It's cost us £2.57 Bn already (that's £17 m on top of the unit price, per jet, if we buy 150), and we've yet to pay for a single jet. Yes we'll share in the profits, but with the Netherlands, Norway, and Turkey already retreating from the programme and with US numbers likely to be cut.....
And we only need it if we spend a minimum of £6 Bn procuring two new carriers.
Carriers may be occasionally useful, but for more than £8 Bn CVF and JCA need to be much, much more than merely useful. And I'm not sure that they are essential.
Balkans: Allies could and did take the strain. The number of sorties flown from our CVS was insignificant.
Sierra Leone: Jags were sitting on the Azores with basing sorted in Senegal, and were held back to let the carrier get there first. And the carrier did get there with no appropriate weapons on its jets. A poor example of a carrier being 'vital'.
If I was deciding the Defence Budget it would be big enough to afford three carriers (not just two), but all of the other priorities I've mentioned would have a higher claim on funding, and if I were thwarted in my spending plans it would be 'nice to have' items like carriers that would go before 'must haves' like tankers, SEAD, recce, and adequate numbers of FJs, and I'd have a surface fleet with at least 35 destroyers and frigates before I bought CVs.
We are not the USA. They can afford Carriers. They can afford wings of C-17s. They can afford F/A-22s. We can't. It's not that they're stupid, it's that they're rich.