Yes- thats an interesting point and it throws up what "playing the joker" can do to carefully laid plans and assumptions. There have been a few of these recently:
- It was fortuitous that we had Illustrious in the Arabian Sea just as the army was deploying to Helmand- Lusty was on a long planned Group Deployment.
- It was also lucky that Lusty was on her way back when the Lebanese crisis developed- however without her SHars she would have been in severe difficulties if the situation had escalated- turning the navy from an asset into a liability.
- The NK situation..
The situation could be improved dramatically if Invincible was in service and if all three carriers had Shars. We could then be in a position where one CVS could go east with a Fort and two or three escorts whilst keeping one in service in the Med/Arabian Sea to respond as required to the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq or the Levant.
However I suspect that its operating costs that are constraining RN ops, not ship numbers- and this is the price of fighting two "medium" sized deployments simultaneously whilst on 2.7% of GDP.
So yes, a little more money for opex would go a long way, but in overall size/ship numbers, the RN is about right- bearing in mind the threat and the fact that all current wars are wars of choice, not neccesity. I'd question the selling of of the three T23's and the Shar decision- which was criminally stupid.