For Gawd's Sake - here we go again!. IMHO the current row with the Yanks gives us an ideal pretext to bin the whole damned project, carriers included. Indeed carriers in partcular!
If anyone really thinks that any government is going to involve us again (after Iraq) in some war outside Europe, they have to be mad. And Perlease do not quote the Malvinas again. We have spent billions buidling a bloody great runway down there with all the knobs and bells, and if we can't hold off the Argies next time round without spending billions more on carriers, we deserve to be out of business. Anyway, would we have the political will to mount a CORPORATE II ? No way!
We seem to have gained access to Afghanistan bases easily enough (though God knows what we think we can achieve there). And what could Rafale do over Afghanistan launching from a carrier in the Arabian Sea? SFA! Indeed what could Rafale do against a hard target only 100 nm from its mother in a temperate climate? Enough to justify all these billions spent on the carriers and on eating humble (French) pie? And would the taxpayer stand for buying pretty little Frog aircraft when they are already having to fork out billions for Typhoons which, they are told, are surplus to requirements? Let us all get back to planet Earth. Either Typhoon can be navalised or we bin the whole carrier fiasco.
Once more, what we need is a large aircraft, with a decent range/payload performance able to deliver PGW from altitude's above the the reach of AAA and tactical SAMs. It would not be expected to penetrate contested airspace, which would have been sanitised before it was committed.