Jacko,
I do not disagree with much of what you say above. I did not suggest that ILLUSTRIOUS was there as a battle winning asset or that it was what the US needed (most definitely they needed the PR9, AAR, R1 etc) but are we to build an RAF around recce and AAR? For sure the Typhoon is a white elephant and we need the capability of JSF instead. What is important is that if we are to get CVF then the MOD trick is to deliver on budget and on time - as opposed to Typhoon, MRA4, Astute etc the money wasted to date on which would pay for CVF many times over.
If JSF were scrapped then we would be in the appalling situation of relying on Typhoon for combat power - we would never take part, because the US would not want the a/c anywhere near an OP theatre.