Tourist,
Although I would recommend that you are cautious ahead of any announcement on this year's Planning Round, I am willing to accept that a Prime Minister's letter and the associated mood music appears to be that the remainder of the dark blue Fisheads have actually realised how close they are to losing the Fleet Air Arm and done something about it (too late for their Harrier mates sadly).
Probably assisted by a bit of China, North Korea and now Tunisia all conveniently in the media that could all possibly be spun to show a requirement for boats and helicopters.
I wish them good luck as I certainly wouldn't want to be in the Freak Force at the moment (certainly one that is about to spend long periods at sea in order to be something on the new carriers!) - but if nothing else can we please, please stop fighting amongst ourselves, arguing quite rudely and looking at each other in a funny way over the briefing tables now and accept that things have to change and just move on.
We do have a real enemy to fight you know
If not we will just eat each other up - and lose the mutual trust and respect that has been hard earned over the years where we (all 3 services) have
all been in some very sticky situations to support the guys on the ground.