WEBF:
I still maintain that Harrier would be more effective than Apache, with greater speed, range, and weapon load.
I still maintain that Tornado is more effective than Harrier would have been, with greater speed, range and weapon load.
Also yes, Yemen would be difficult to get to. I'm not sure what lj101's point is, first it's that you can't count on being able to overfly other countries, then uses Afghanistan as an example of where you would have to have used carrier air.... don't you have to overfly other countries to get there from the sea? And actually, although the USN launched a lot of TLAMs and flew a lot of fast jet sorties, about 80% of the ordnance (by tonnage) dropped during those initial weeks was from aircraft that took off from CONUS or sovereign bases, as was almost all of the ISR product.
Which brings me to my main point - if we don't have suitable basing, then having a CVS with some jets on it isn't going to help in somewhere like Yemen - where will the ISR, tankers, AWACS etc come from? How will you develop targets?
Carriers are needed for influence, but when you actually want to run an air campaign you need tarmac somewhere. It's really not about the jets - what we really need to do from a UK Joint point of view is run an investment appraisal of buying carriers against spending the same amount on some additional tankers.....