Sorry for causing any confusion but the suggestion for an all singing LHA would be as a replacement for our older vessels and they would carry the exact same complement of 35's as the QEC carrier.
QEC will be capable of operating 30+ f/w and a good number of helos. Probably more once she is in service and folk work out how to manage the deck. You won't get that on an LHA. More to the point, the
requirement QEC fills is that for CVF (ie provide f/w AD, strike and r/w ASW).
The 'assumption' I am allegedly guilty of is not mine but that of our illustrious Minister for Defence who was speaking at the Chief of the Air Staff's Air Power Conference at the Royal United Services Institute. He states the carriers will deploy with an air wing of between 8 - 12 aircraft.
He is making an assumption, which is already different from that voiced only a few months previously that there would only be 6 F35 on QEC deployed for a couple of weeks a year and different again from those made during the noughties. The planning assumptions can and do change over time. Contrary to the belief of some, they are not tablets of stone.
The point is that you
can buy additional a/c, you
can deploy them differently, you
can change the personnel mix - it is just a question of changing funding assumptions. What you
can't do, is retroactively change the capacity of a major capital asset with a life of 50 years because you built it too small in the first place. What you also
shouldn't do is allow one service to buy equipment that will prevent it being interoperable with the others, should the need arise.....