The patriot in me, despite my current location, would love to see HMS QE steaming the high seas, catapulting state of the art fighters into the skies to demonstrate British Sea Power and military might. The realist in me asks, to what end would this be?
There are a number of folk however, who appear to be hoping for a B cancellation, largely so an "I told you so" T-shirt can be worn on the CVF/F35 as a whole, rather than any sensible formulation of defence policy / capability.
Despite the quote, this is not directed at Not_a_boffin directly, rather it is a reflection on the sentence re: defence policy. It all depends upon how one sees our defence requirement. Personally, I believe that our policy should indeed be
defence rather than offence, and to that end my take would be that aircraft carriers and the argument of power projection is not relevant to the defence of the UK. Equally, the argument about our interests overseas is no longer relevant and sensible defence policy may be to accept that the Empire days are gone, that even if the Royal Navy has two large carriers with aeroplanes launched by whatever means, the days of steaming around the world sorting out bother, be that the Straits of Hormuz or somewhere in the South China Sea are over and that our attention and budget would be better served concentrating on our immediate region. Afghanistan should be the last British Military venture into the Middle East and the sooner our troops of any service are removed from there, the better. Enough good, brave service personnel have died already in a conflict I personally do not believe they should ever have been involved.
Sensible defence policy may also include not blowing the budget on short-range stealth aircraft when, as many have already here observed, there is little chance of stealthing the carrier, or the tanker - unless that tanker is the same shape as the recipient aircraft.
Sensible defence policy may be to ensure the services have sufficient means to defend the UK only. A strong Royal Navy to operate in the Atlantic Ocean, the English Channel and north towards Scandanavia and Iceland. To do this does not necessarily require an expensive carrier. A strong Royal Air Force with sufficient numbers of fighters, not all of which need to be stealthy, to maintain the defence of the UK plus some maritime patrol capability. A strong, flexible Army able to operate within our region if required, but with home defence as the primary goal.
I believe this would be doable in a budget that was spared the cost of the current military deployments, the carriers and the F35.