And for WEBF:
Why would the Army feel a political need to be involved, with Afghanistan going on?
OK, perhaps I didn't make myself clear. When I said 'a political token gesture', I meant a token gesture by the politicians because things weren't showing immediate results and to look like we were ratcheting up the pressure. It certainly wasn't as a result of any request from NATO (and remember, this was a NATO operation). I can't answer as to why the Army would want to get involved other than to say that as military people, we all want to feel we're contributing - and perhaps it would have been too much to stomach a successful military campaign fought almost entirely from the air.
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.
Yes, the RN fired something like 4 of the initial 112 TLAMs and contributed to the embargo operation. I also have to say I thought Brocklesby did a fantastic job on all fronts. 'NGS against targets of opportunity' is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration - can you provide an example of anything hit by NGS in this conflict? Anyone?....[sound of tumbleweed]. If we should ever meet for a beer I will be glad to give you the full story about Gadaffi's naval forces, but I think that even you must agree that they were basically destroyed by air power.
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?
I'm afraid this betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge about how air power is employed. The AH were not waiting to be scrambled from deck alert to engage targets of opportunity. Nor, for that matter were Rafales from CDG or AV8s from GARIBALDI, so I can't see how you think a handful of Harriers on a CVS would have been any different - the fastest response will always be from an airborne jet, do the maths. No-one at the CAOC was saying "thank goodness, now we have something that can get there quickly" when OCEA finally steamed slowly into one part of the enormous JOA with its couple of slow helicopters.
If I understand where you're coming from, you are saying that this NATO force would have been more effective if we had had a CVS with harriers deployed. But we already had lots of carrier air in the task force, notably the French who were flying a greater number of much more advanced aircraft than Harrier, carrying more ordnance than Harrier could, with more liberal ROE than the UK had. If nobody can put a conclusive case together that these aircraft made a big difference (and believe me, I have seen the OA data and it isn't showing that), how would Harrier have helped?