OA,
"guess where I used to work?"
Not in the central policy planning staff, presumably!
No-one, least of all me, is suggesting that the CVF programme per se is a bad idea. For a conventionally-powered carrier - esp. with CTOL, Dave-C, E-2D, C-2 COD, Merlin, 4 x T45 AAW and 4 x T23 ASW, 1+ x SSN in DS and MARS x lots to replenish this lot - it's seems to the (non-expert) a bl**dy good design. And clever people are working hard to make sure that it works - both as a warship and as a floating airfield.
But the question is that to get to a "let's retake the Falklands", you add 2 x LPD, 3 x Bay class, another 1 x CVF, 2 x SSN, every other escort we've still got, and you hope. A lot! Why? Insufficient numbers of T45s to provide area air defence of anything but the CVF, placing a greater reliance on Dave to provide CAP over a landing fleet, means that the CVF's positioning is compromised and her jets are spending more time defending the group rather than putting "warheads on foreheads" in the words of our colonial cousins.
So I do intrinsically favour CVF as a capability - it could be quite useful. Despite being light blue, I favour Dave-C and six dedicated FAA Sqns to go aboard, with E-2D and C-2A to maximise actual operational capability (and to give FCs a chance to compare quality of RN and RAF inflight catering.....
)
And CVF would look v impressive for cocktail parties, which even the light blue have to accept are useful for the FCO (albeit light blue green with envy!); but it is only useful as part of a balanced force of 12-14 x T45s and a total FF/DD force of c 35 - 40 escorts, along with MARS, SSNs and all the rest of that "naval stuff" that means that it can do its job. And at the moment, there isn't the budget to do that.
S41