ORAC re your #7714, context is everything and in 2000 the RN were desperately trying to convince the Treasury that the Carriers were "just" boxes and that steel and air was cheap.
The concept at that time was that the Carriers were just floating runways and that the combat power was in the aircraft and in the Type 45 which would supply the C2.
However, the concept reverted to "normal" when the carriers were ordered ie the C2 was to be invested in the carriers themselves (one of the reasons why the project became so expensive), and partly because we ordered so few Type 45s that we could not guarantee that one would always be with the Carrier.
"Normal" in the context of RN aviation ops is, as observed by others, that the air group and the platform is, together, an integrated weapons system.