Going back a couple of pages, to before the discussions about French wine, whether or not certain posters exist, or how many carriers the RN lost in WWII but ignoring the much larger number that were not lost - back to
here:
On your second point and IMHO, OCEAN and AH were sent to the Libyan operation (after land-based air power had dealt with any possible naval threat) as a political token gesture and in a desperate attempt to get the RN and Army involved after it became clear that NGS wasn't going to make any difference either. Maybe a little harsh but difficult to point to any evidence to the contrary. I do, though, take my hat off to the AH boys, who operated very professionally and at significantly higher risk than their fixed-wing brethren. I certainly don't think anyone is going to claim that AH was a game-changer in this conflict though.
Why would the Army feel a political need to be involved, with Afghanistan going on? As for the RN, it was involved from the start with TLAM strikes, maritime interdiction operations, minehunting, and then NGS against targets of opportunity. NATO had the naval forces of the Gaddafi regime bottled up in port, and would have made short work of them had they put to sea.
So why was
Ocean deployed as an Apache strike platform?
Did the politicians perceive a need to have a means to strike land targets promptly? Did they feel that the UK was not doing enough? Or perhaps they wanted to show that we still have the capability post Harrier (shame Apache has neither the range or speed of Harrier)? Perhaps
my suggestion to run a small number of Harriers cheaply might interest them?
Anyway, you know my views. Here is
a viewpoint from Italy.