Max Hastings is a moron - who seems to write to suit the agenda of the editor.
From
here:
The government has done the right thing by ordering the carriers, which are almost indispensable to support land operations overseas.
Guess who said that in 2007? Or this, in 2004 ?
In the air, Britain needs a modest force of ground-attackers, a lot of helicopters, and a credible plane for the Royal Navy's two planned aircraft carriers. These ships are indeed indispensable to the navy's future role.
Ponder who might have said this, in 2006..
The Royal Navy must have its carrier programme and a good aircraft to fly off the hulls
Any guesses? Anyone....?
From
here:
Why do you think it's worth sharing?
He makes some predictably poorly informed but biased comments such as quoting 36 a/c per platform reduced to 12. That isn't the case, the overall procurement of a/c hasn't reduced, what has changed are assumptions over how many should routinely operate from the platform apart from on specific tasking.
He bangs on about needing the entire fleet to support/protect it - which is simply ludicrous and fails to even consider operating with coalition/allied support.
He suggests cheap and cheerful steel late on top of tanker hulls for aircraft carriers - a clear indication he should stick to bottom-end journalism and leave others to Naval architecture! Even more stupidly he suggests buying low-tech aircraft - really? When in other parts he quotes the threat from a resurgent (and technically improving ) Russia!
We all know the CVF have absorbed large amounts of the EP and they are a struggle to man - that's symptomatic of the position the wider Navy is in, not just because of the CVF. The Armed Forces across the board are all finding manning an issue and I suspect will continue to do so.
As DM rants go, this is just puerile.