This fiasco is part of our leaving the EU. The Carriers were supposed to be part of the EU forces, with probably French planes and pilots...It was all started by BLiar and carried on by that idiot Cameron...of course no-one dared tell the UK taxpayer, what the real plan is/was, as they would have gone rightly ape.
So now we have thankfully voted to leave, we end up with two Carriers, no planes and nowhere near enough escorts.....and the poor old top brass have to pretend that all is well.
As for acting with Allies....the only allies we can really trust are Canadians, Aussie’s and the US....that is if anyone will pick up the phone in the US after all our insults.
All our politicians should be keelhauled.
Things went down hill after pounds, schillings and pence were given up.
Were that the case, the carriers would have been designed from the start with catapults instead of the ski ramp.
There was a brief time when the RN thought about retrofitting the second ship with catapults in order to use the less expensive F-35C, but that was cancelled due to the costs of making structural changes to an already built hull.