I think that there are discrete issues here.
I don't think anyone would argue that a ship tends to move at a slower pace than an aircraft which has all the implications well highlighted above.
I don't also think that anyone in the RN can complain about the fact that to move a combatant around incurs a tarif of absence before and after the 'on station' time.
What might be worth investigating is why the metrics are different and what the effects would be if they weren't. After all they are under pinned by quality of life/ moral component of operational capability notions, are they not?
Supposedly the manning for any force depends on the harmony guideline - so there must have been a rationale for them being different. Otherwise one could argue that SDSR wasn't worth the paper it was written on. Ah, hang on a minute.
Perhaps we should be arguing for harmony guidelines to align, based on the current RAF model - but I suspect that would be unaffordable, and apparently affordability trumps everything these days. Maybe it's impossible to make savings based on harmony - but I ssupect that isn't quite the case.
I'm not convinced that the RAF is, in its entirety, supporting ops from the UK. An Aussie told me that once about their Air Force and I did think about it before i dismissed the notion. However, I am certainly not convinced that a circa 40,000 strong force looks efficient when you look at what we can actually deploy. The same is true of the other services. I am not convinced that the army readiness cycle is as lean as it could be. I am also not convinced that the RN needs its current officer cadre construct to deploy a small amount of combatants. But then again I don't feel the need to say so in the national press. And I am genuinely all ears if anyone is prepared to enlighten me.