Yea automated or not I think that idea will come back to haunt them. You have to plan for mass causalities of both crew and equipment. 600 - 700 hundred IIRC was about the size of our Engineering Department.
From what I’ve read, the air-crew and support staff add another 1,000 to the size of the crew. My guess is that if the carrier took a hit and air operations were disabled, these people would probably be free to help with damage control etc.
Part of the idea is not to get hit - that in most of the situations in which these carriers are likely to be used, that they are unlikely to be attacked by a force that can damage them.
But, yes, if they are hit, damage control is an issue because of the crew numbers - the carriers will not be as likely to survive in such a situation as US carriers would be.
But what people have to remember, is that if the RN insisted on crew levels like those of the USN, the British Government would not have funded the carriers. It’s a political reality. The bottom line is the Royal Navy is more powerful with these carriers than without them - and to get them they had to be willing to come up with a way to have them with less people.
It’s better to have some capability in reality than to hold out for a theoretically better solution you’ll never get.
These Carriers don’t match US standards - but they are at least in the same ballpark again, for the first time in decades and should match anybody else in the world. As the UK is unlikely to find itself at war with the US, that’s not bad.