Common Sense
I do read this site but rarely comment. Seems a lot of people on here know a wee bit more about the subject matter than I. However, I think this thread is a bit all over the place. To me this is a little easier than this thread or our government make it.
Firstly, to the government. (As if they read PPRUNE :-)) You want to play expeditionary warfare, you need to pay for it. If we can't afford to play, don't play.
If you do want to pay for expeditionary warfare, then air power is important. And to ensure flexibility, such air power needs to capable of maritime delivery. (Regardless of the colour of uniform delivering it) It is pretty poor argument to say that Libya was done from home / Italy so we don't need carriers. Net is if a plane is carrier capable you get to choose where to fly it from. If it is land based you don't. If we had a carrier with the right aircraft it would have been involved in Libya. (Can't say FACT, but seems very obvious to me)
Ark / Harrier is somewhat mute. Ark is pretty broken up already. Further they were never really the rght answer. Not replacing the previous Ark was the real issue. And now we are building those replacements, we need to do it properly. That means two properly equiped carriers (to ensure one *normally* available) , and all strike capability being maritime oriented! In fact the only aircraft that should be land oriented are UK AD and planes that are too big to land on a deck. (AT AAR etc)
We should 100% of kept the harriers though, simply because they provided flexibility. The idea that Afgan was the only thing we will get involved in was always suspect. Allied to the fact that many troops would have preferred the harrier to be kept means that the removal was a wacky decision.
So keeping light blue only typhoons seems reasonable. F35C should be carrier oriented with some land operations when needed. We also need AEW capability from day one.
Before any one thinks I am biased, I am ex-matelot that has equal disdain for crabs or wafoos. Best ship I served on was Cleopatra, sans flying thing on the back! However, now I am just a tax payer trying to make sense of the things governments do.