lj101:
I know you are an ATC officer but do keep up.
I realise that your 4 month det in the CAOC has qualified you as an expert
Your ill-informed speculation about my background is inaccurate. Do keep up.
Justanaopinion:
Why would we want to limit ourselves to the land based option only, and not have the flexibility of the sea based option, unless you are being single service minded and not in the best interests of the country?
What I said was, we should (from the JOINT point of view) do an investment appraisal. I didn't say it would go one way or the other - deciding not to 'limit ourselves' to the land based option only might similarly be seen as single-service minded - if the best value (including damage to the rest of defence in austere times) was tankers then let's limit ourselves that way. Similarly, if it's better value to have a carrier, then we'll just have to limit ourselves in terms of what our overall joint air capability can do if the JCA force is tied to a ship. There will need to be a compromise somewhere and we should approach it from the point of view of what's best value for defence rather than which service benefits.