Navaleye,
thank you for your analysis of the conflict from which I have just returned. I think you also said to another poster:
Your arugment lack credibility because you were not there.
I hope you don't mind if I quote this back to you, as well as
Yet again a complete failure to acknowledge facts.
I would like to remind you of some pertinent ones (facts that is). You said:
If we had a carrier on station, it would have had its own AEW and not needed AAR and got the job done much cheaper. Despite all. the BS, light Blue have contributed less than 10% of the sorties.
Not needed AAR? Then why were we giving so much fuel to the Rafales and Super Etendards off the Charles de Gaulle? On costs, I hope you're not relying on the crayon calculations of Mr Ward - that's been done to death on another thread. Your stats on the RAF contributing less than 10% of the sorties? Depending on how you measure it you could come to that conclusion, although I hope you don't imagine that is any form of measure of effectiveness - if you do, you'll need to swallow the fact that the RAF contributed significantly more than the jets on the CDG, who actually didn't bring anything more than the FAF jets out of Solenzara...
SSNs and TLAMs for precision strike. CVS and Harriers for CAS and Apache for local. No other assets would be needed and the whole thing could have been done at a fraction of the price.
You are Lewis Page and I claim my £5. Precisely what are you intending to hit with your TLAMs, as I don't see any of the ISTAR assets we needed to do target development, and of course giving up big bombs and Storm Shadow would mean we couldn't have hit any of the hardened targets. Clearly within your "no other assets" you have some means of carrying out SEAD, JPR, COMINT, SIGINT, IMINT, battlespace management [no, Tourist, Baggers aren't equipped to dynamically manage a 100-line ATO from an altitude high enough to see as far as an E-3 can...] etc? Oh, and also, knowing the rate at which we can fire TLAMs and a generous allowance for sortie generation from CVS with Harrier, it would take you in the order of a week to carry out a typical day's strike serials for the period May to July.
Now, don't get me wrong - I do think carriers are useful, but I can categorically say that in this conflict they have not been essential - and actually, as long as we'd had the jets, I don't think we'd really have missed them on many occasions.
The point to be made here is at the start of the thread - someone in MoD has been briefing journalists something wildly inaccurate just to keep the carrier question in the news.
I thank Jimlad for his balanced view - I, too, am immensely impressed by what BROCKLESBY and the TLAM shooters achieved. I have some inside info on Liverpool so so less impressed there, but that should not detract. Frankly I have found the RN to be a really professional lot wherever I have found them, but all this carping and spinning that a carrier can do the job of the RAF is not helping anyone in Defence - including the RN, who are in my opinion being sold down the river to protect a totemic capability while their surface fleet (which really delivers, and is what they should be concentrating on) creaks with overtasking.
Jimlad, I was involved in delivering the show-and-tell the other week, so thanks for the feedback!