orca,
At this point, who owns the 48 Dave-Bs is the least of our concerns. Indeed, if there are to be only 48 Dave-Bs (B for Boat?) and c. 100 Dave-A (A for Air Force?) then you could even paint ROYAL NAVY on the side of each one and operate them from Yeovs.
The bigger point now is that there is clearly a debate in the US about whether the USMC actually needs the STOVL capabilities of Dave-B, and if so,
at what price? It is interesting to me that the USMC is going to have at least 80 Dave-C
http://defensetech.org/2011/03/14/na...plan-revealed/, opening to door to an all Dave-C buy in the mid-2020s.
And as was pointed out earlier by HH's quote:
But if the US Marine Corps gives up on the F-35B, the Royal Navy is royally screwed. If design changes in the Queen Elizabeth II carrier class have been finalized, closing the door on CATOBAR and committing them to STOVL, they have even fewer viable alternatives than the US Marine Corps. The Royal Navy has no other high performance, multirole or support aircraft to fall back upon and don’t have the luxury of a sister service providing deck space for
CATOBAR aircraft to make up for lost high end capabilities on their ships. Either the Royal Navy would be forced to undergo an outrageously expensive development program of a new aircraft by itself, or go back and convert the QE IIs back to handle CATOBAR aircraft and chose from the small palette of options in this class.
Um, yep. And the odds on this happening are shortening.
S41