WEBF - spot on. There's also the point that carrier qualification will be a doddle with the B compared with CTOL options, while the B's range compromise is mitigated to some degree by less need for go-around reserves. It's a good fit for UK requirements given the reality of where we are and offers a much better real-world chance that we'll be able to generate and sustain a good capability. And as it happens the timeframe for UK IOC and FOC fits pretty well with the timeframe for ironing out the main bugs. No aircraft? IIRC current post-SDSR plans are that we'll have 42 airframes by 2023. Of course there's a balance of pros and cons, I don't deny that for a minute, which has been debated endlessly, and there's a range of views on that. As to organic defence, it's always been planned that the carriers won't deploy without escorts and the T45s were always planned with carrier AAD as their primary mission. The carriers themselves rightly have have good last ditch provision, as well as providing the outer layer, and this keeps things simpler onboard. As you rightly say, any suggestion that without the carriers we'd have far more escorts (escorting what?) is a fallacy. It's also valid to question the value of only having lots of escorts with little to escort and whose main ability is to defend themselves. The carriers will be in a different league in terms of their ability to deliver military effect, as well as in terms of the peacetime diplomacy signals they can send. Having said all that the navy does need more escorts, but canning the carriers isn't the right way to achieve that.