unnecessary future carriers

Since hearing that Britain will build two supercarriers by at least 2018 about two years ago I haven't since figured out a proper reason for them.



Planned to have a deck configuration of 36 F-35 Lightning II STOVL fighters, costing nearly £4 billion.

You could certainly argue that even though there is no war for them today maybe in the mere future Britain could have another war like the Falklands or might need to conduct air operations in a region without land bases, but it's still a stretch considering the Royal Navy still have a handful of their ASW carriers such as the HMS Ocean and Invincible.

The French are putting forward a similar ambitious program for two carriers around the same size, these of which are to consist of the excellent Dassault Rafale fighters.



Nice!

My first thoughts of this was these would be perfect for protecting French supply ships or merchant navies against hostile navies far overseas, since the Rafale could fire the deadly Exocet missile, a fleet of them would surely destroy any attacking forces!



But this just isn't a plausible way to go, not only would the carrier have to be in that particular region, wouldn't it not be smarter to develop a STOVL jet that could serve as an Exocet platform, a couple of those put on container ships that may have to operate near states at war or hostile towards France would probably be enough of a defense instead of dashing out over two billion for a ship that can only be in one place at any one time!



So what about our American friends?

America has the largest carrier fleet in the world, the Russians are only operating the Admiral Kuznetsov while the US are operating over 11 Nimitz carriers, on top of these massive naval logistics is a further two ordered 'CVN-21' carriers.



They will be the largest warships ever built!

Like the Nimitz class carriers the CVN-21 carriers will have a variety of fixed wing aircraft, more than most countries would have in their entire air forces in its inventory.

They are unnecessary considering how the Nimitz class carriers have pretty much come unmatched in the past 30 years.

Both in quality and quantity!


Related:

Jeff Head: CVN-21 specs

Defence and Freedom: The Cost of Carrier Aviation

Gizmodo: Britain Building Next-Generation Aircraft Carriers for F-35 Fighters

Argentina eventually going to 'win back' the Falklands?

Last week Argentina handed in a large pile of documents with "the fruits of" 11 years of research claiming a vast amount of ocean east of Argentina, which includes the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.

The claim adds to the 4,800,000 sq km of continental shelf spreading out 320 km (200 miles) from Argentina's coast.



So they're pretty much saying the Falkland Islands are part of Argentina and that Britain has really been camped up on their door step since 1833, but they have also backed this up with 11 years of detailed evidence and handed it into the UN, so will they simply ignore it or will Britain have to play fair and hand back the Falklands to its, well lets say rightful owner.



For instance when Argentina invaded in 1982 Britain responded by long range air raids (Black Buck raids) backed by a large naval convoy including three ASW carriers and some converted container ships and cruise liners to carry soldiers (mostly conscripts).



Now that's a little overdoing it if you ask me, and a little petty, why didn't Britain simply prove the point that it was the valid owner of the islands by putting so much logic onto the table that Argentina would spontaneously decide to give them back the islands.

Is it maybe because the Falklands are actually part of Argentina, (they're continental shelf anyway which is well established) and Britain had been wrong in seizing them and stealing them from Argentina in 1833, this isn't the first time Argentina contacted the UN to bring this up for debate but on numerous occasions the UK has refused to bring the fact up, not saying that makes them look any less guilty by the way!

At least if another war breaks out Argentina will probably lose since it doesn't have what matters, and that's force!