Bengo
I like your thinking, However, two things come to mind that may be a spanner in the works. Firstly, the RN is much smaller now that it was in 1982, with fewer sailors and shore establishments, and training posts increasingly filled by civilian personnel. Secondly, the ships that went south in 1982 were manned in the most part by their normal crews. Augmenting the ships company of a frigate, or forming a naval party aboard a STUFT vessel is one thing, forming an entire crew is a quite different challenge.
That was always how the third CVS and its CAG was designed to be manned, even in the days when 'committed to NATO' actually meant something.
Presumably this would have made use of personnel who has served aboard a CVS before? This seems to be another argument for doing
something to continue embarking fixed wing aircraft
this decade, so that those skills continue to exist.
You would hope that things that were judged too difficult or too costly in peacetime would become possible in wartime, but are we still able to innovate and think outside of the box?
The First Sea Lord recently discussed the carrier issue, according to Pompey news:
Navy boss warns aircraft carriers are ‘vital’
Admiral Stanhope pointed out that before HMS Ark Royal and the Harrier jets were axed in 2010, the UK’s aircraft carriers were used almost every year since the Second World War.
He said: ‘For the UK, the year 1989 is instructive. I say that, not because it was the year the Berlin Wall came down, but because it was the only year between 1945 and 2010 that the UK did not deploy her carriers in support of her national interests.’
He added: ‘To put it simply, countries that aspire to strategic international influence have aircraft carriers and countries that have them, use them.
‘Air power from the sea was an important part of our national story last century and it will continue to be a vital part of our national story this century.’