We'll definitely get one and I am fairly confident that we will get 2 carriers - which will allow us to have one permanently at sea.
This will give us a pretty impressive piece of kit that can do a lot of things pretty well. It won't be a Nimitz-like strike carrier but it will be far more than Illustrious/Ark/Invincible ever were. Anything wildly divergent from this, such as all carriers cancelled, JSF cancelled, 2 carriers with 24 jets on each simultaneously is wild fantasy land, imho.
The QEC will be extremely impressive and useful, but for me the important question is will they be better than 10 FFs or 20 small FFs/corvettes? Still not sure.
NB: I have nothing to do with either the carrier or JSF programmes so this is all personal opinion from open source - which hopefully everything on PPRuNe is!
Last edited by Backwards PLT; 3rd Jun 2013 at 10:23.