Courtney,
I think you're right on the JSF, even with all the questions - on both sides of the Atlantic - about whether it's the right platform. However, just look at what they did to Nimrod - there's always a plan B, it's just that sometimes it's so utterly unpalatable that we refuse to acknowledge it. So just where is the final red line for JSF and the carriers? Is there even a red line as per Nimrod?
Without the JSF the carriers are pointless, but there may come a time when it's actually cheaper and operationally sensible to scrap JSF, buy COTS and sell the carriers and start from scratch. I can imagine the uproar, both politically and militarily, but if the Osborne doctrine, where the cure is as bad as the illness, persists and everything is up for grabs, I can see a world where that is at least considered in MOD as a plan B.