Blacksheep - What the ??? are you talking about?!
Just wondering out loud why either the UK or the French need an aircraft carrier. Carriers are for global force projection. Thirty-odd years ago UK withdrew from East of Suez precisely because we could no longer afford to run an imaginary Empire. Meanwhile, the French withdrew even from Algeria. The idea was to cut back our armed forces to operate only in Europe and around our own shores. Having slashed the armed forces to a shadow of its former modest self, Maggie Thatcher decided to take back Los Malvinas from the invading Argies and had to rent a fleet of merchant vessels to get the job done. Now, after ignoring that lesson and even more defence cuts that leave our armed forces barely the size of an old division, we are now looking at sailing forth into the world waving a big stick.
So what's it all about?
Its us and the French and our aircraft carriers I'm talking about...