Just
I'm not saying that the RN didnt do carrier ops during HERRICK - it did. What happened though was that the RN wasn't doing anywhere near as much as it used to do. This had an impact on the ability to generate meaningful dets - if you take a look at what the RN put to sea in this period, we went from 14- 18 airframe detachments, which did occur ocassionally during the late 90s, early 2000s to an average of 4-6 aircraft at best, and the RN was heavily reliant on foreign nations to keep its carrier skills alive even then. This is in no way a slur on the Harrier force who were working incredibly hard on HERRICK and elsewhere to maintain the skills needed. The reality is though that once HERRICK began, the RN ceased to have the ability to sustain carrier operations except for short bursts, and even then in reduced numbers. Despite what the RN tries to portray, the reality is that we've not done a sustained carrier deployment with reasonable sized airwing (i.e. more than just a token presence to keep skills alive) for the best part of a decade.
As soon as the Harrier came off HERRICK, it immediately saw planning round options being raised that took it to 10 FE@R, which was designed to keep basic carrier capability only. In the planners eyes, as soon as GR9 was off HERRICK it was clear that it was never going to be deployed again operationally - the fleet was just too small. Having suffered in an area which scrutinised said options during this time , I am happy in saying that while all round generation may have been an aspiration, the thing that saved GR9 was the need to keep carrier STOVL seedcorn capability.