As someone with a ship design/build background and only a rudimentary aero eng background I'd like to echo Lowe Fliegers post. This is the absolute guts of it.
However, one thing that might be worth thinking about is that the scale of the proposed QEC (forget the current IOC-number limits) operations when first conceived are significantly in excess of what we (or anyone else) have ever done with SHAR/GR7.
If - as postulated in the original requirement for QEC, you're launching a 16 ship mission, with a significant number of aircraft on deck alert or servicing, then as FB11 suggests, we're looking at a very limited amount of clear deck on recovery. One of the major reservations I always had about SRVL.
I was always a little concerned during the early CVF deliberations 1999-2003, that manpower scaling and so-forth was being done on the basis of 800/801 AE and manning, without the understanding that the CVF requirement was for something else entirely. With larger CAGs you tend to do more diverse and potentially more demanding (certainly in terms of weapon / stores loading) than we have done hitherto - even including the Balkans campaign and the Deny Flight ops over Iraq pre 2003.
I'd be interested to hear whether FB11, Orca, Engines or JF consider this a real issue or just in the noise.