Events in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan and Egypt kicked off the Arab Spring in late Jan/early Feb and looked like spreading. HMG should have started contingency planning and considered deploying RN assets, including a carrier had one been available.
Contingency planning to do what? Bomb all those places at the same time?
If evil dictators surrender when there's a carrier offshore, why is Kadaffy holding out? The CdG is on the scene, isn't it?
... Earmarked ships and submarines could have stored, sailed and been 'acclimatising' in the Med by mid to late Feb, picking up anything else necessary at Gib or Malta en route.
All the last-minute needs beiing cleverly pre-positioned there. Uh-huh.
... RN assets would already have been in precisely the right place (as was HMS Triumph) to acquire situational awareness and act with maximum effect for NEO or whatever else necessary. [/I}
What maximum effects could RN ships such as Triumph provide? 4.5 inch guns?
Had nothing transpired, RN units could simply have melted away to continue monitoring events in North Africa/the Middle East while continuing to provide valuable intelligence.
What's transpiring now is that units of the RN as well as the Charlie dG. have been bombarding Libya for weeks now, and Kadaffy Duck is still holding out, and thiose other Muslim countries are still going to Hell..
So much for awesome, fearsome naval power.
"Melting away to continue monitoring events in North Africa/the Middle East while continuing to provide valuable intelligence."
If a lucky bomb doesn't get Kadaffy this summer, I expect that political support for the British and French kampf nach Libya ( "nach" -- is that the wrong preposition? ) to melt away, all right. They'll put out some weak cover story like that: "Melting away to continue monitoring events in North Africa/the Middle East ..."