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The article
"Floating mausoleums to political vanity: Our two new aircraft carriers cost almost £8 billion to build but, with the Middle East on fire, they're languishing in Portsmouth. We'd be better off selling them, says DAVID PATRIKARAKOS"
creates a bit of a stir.
Some online responses claim that it's error-ridden while agreeing somewhat.
I would certainly have edited the part about the missile threat to carriers; the anti-ship cruise missile threat appears to be in check IF the attacked ship or a well-positioned escort is on alert. The old and neglected Moskva probably didn't even have effective combat systems and no proper damage control preparations when it was struck by two missiles.
I would point at the "ballistic" anti-ship missile threat instead; the British carriers (and the American ones!) may be kept out of the range of Houthi ballistic anti-ship missiles because they pose too much of a risk. The British escorts are likely less well-equipped to deal with that threat than the American ones, at least that's what I read from the success of American-made SAMs against ballistic missiles and the development of a new generation of Aster missiles (the British escorts' SAM) to improve anti-ballistic missile ability.
I picked the British carriers as examples for the cost of carrier aviation relative to land-based airpower about 15 years ago. The high costs were never a secret or news.
Nor was the issue of the British not really buying enough F-35 for two carriers to make sense any insider knowledge:
There's not really much new about the naval vs. land-based aviation argument.
The American carriers are instruments for land attack against countries that cannot effectively defend themselves against it, and it's been that way since late 1943. Most other carriers showed marginal utility since then.
Land-based aviation has come such a way that bombing Afghanistan from Diego Suarez and Kuwait was more practical than bombing over Afghanistan using carrier-based aircraft. Midair refuelling is the key, and navies try to ignore it because midair-refueling using converted (plentiful) airliners extends the airpower-dominated maritime areas so much that surface fleets make very little sense in a peer war. They need to be either awfully far away from hostile land or enjoy land-based assistance by fighters (which usually means that the carrier isn't needed as a base in the scenario).
Personally, I think that CROWSNEST (having an airborne early warning helicopter) was the brightest part of the British carrier investment effort of the past 20 years (albeit it's apparently technically not terribly great). Rotary AEW assets coupled with lock-on after launch surface to air missiles can substitute for carrier fighters in the defensive role, and likely cope much better with surprise saturation attacks than carrier fighters could. Admirals would prefer to have the fighters as additional defence layer (and their radars as additional sensors), but admirals are not known for being good at allocation of scarce resources (budget) for very good reasons.
A small carrier with affordable combat aircraft (Harrier II with APG-83 and modern air-to-air missiles) might nevertheless make much sense in some scenarios, but only so if ambition and costs are kept small. A few such 15,000 tons carriers with enough aircraft for three on station and three on 5-minute readiness as interceptors could make quite a difference as escort carrier between Japan and Hawaii. The Americans have no need for these, as they could improvise with land-based AEW and their amphibious carriers, of course.
So what's a single French carrier good for? Launching a few airborne missiles throughout four decades of service? That could be substituted for by a chartered small cargo ship and some containerised cruise missiles.
What are two British carriers with effectively one air wing good for? The British delude themselves into thinking they can do American-style land attack in every year (the French cannot when their carrier is in the shipyard for maintenance). That's it. Again, buying some standard (not capsuled for submarine use) surface-launched cruise missiles to be launched from some otherwise non-combat ships (volume and deck area on frigates and destroyers is too scarce) would yield about the same land attack capability, especially paired with midair-refuelled land-based combat aircraft being in range (within thousands of kilometres and if necessary overflight rights).
Other (online) commentary I saw recently called for a British focus on the naval realm, at the expense of the land forces. But what could be achieved in the naval realm? Russia has a crap navy and China has a navy on the far side of the globe that could very largely be neutralised by land-based aviation. So what's to be gained by adding a couple more British warships? Prettier naval parades for more tourism? Navy enthusiasts being happy? (Navy enthusiasts always want more, though. They're never happy!)
Here are musings about what could/should have been done for security in Europe instead, spending-wise:
/2016/12/what-europeans-could-do-for-more.html
That would have been much less "sexy" than aircraft carriers that could fit tennis courts inside.
related:
/2010/03/naval-procurement.html
/2010/09/almost-unique-british-defence.html
/2013/03/rebuttal-to-mcgrathid-about-carrier.html
/2016/12/musings-about-naval-power-in-european.html
/2018/04/a-deconstruction-of-micc-propaganda.html
/2023/04/chinas-naval-geography-problem-and-usn.html
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