But surely any air defence capability (for a deployed task group) is/was better than none*? By the Way, wasn't the Harrier GR7/9 meant to get Link 16 as well as ASRAAM (which would have helped make up for the lack of radar)? All a bit academic now. Some of us would have liked the Sea Harrier to have been kept in service, and have read suggestions that it may have had a better chance of being saved (in that the RN could have made a stronger case) from the axe than the GR9.
We have to get through this decade before F35 is flying from CVF, ideally without suffering any defeats or major losses. According to the Prime Minister
we do need carriers, although he will not say why we do not this decade.
Whilst keeping an eye on CVF/F35, we should not forget the very real possibility of a strategic shock - including one or two international issues that have been getting more and more heated for years. The things that we cannot predict are the ones that we ought to worry about...
*If nothing else, it could investigate unknown aircraft and identify them. Can you imagine a situation where a UK task group is doing maritime interdiction operations, and/or perhaps clearing some mines, and a potentially hostile (also potentially innocent) aircraft keeps approaching. In a situation less than all out war, Rules of Engagement are unlikely to permit ships from using their weapons until at relatively close range. If the aircraft was carrying anti ship missiles, it would probably have fired them and gone away. Likewise a recce mission is unlikely to get inside missile range - remember that during the 80s tanker war, Iranian C130s were used to co-ordinate mining and speedboat attacks against international shipping.