I am fully cognizant of force projection. But Britain does not need to force project...they have no empire to protect. And they will not be going up against anyone that they need that much ship borne firepower against.
I am not sure they could get the same bang for the buck with other ships. Also note that when new aircraft technology comes along, the carrier gets an upgrade without having to do anything to the ship itself.
Bang for the buck? They cannot even afford them. They will not be able to even afford to fully equip then with F-35's for maybe 10 more years...at least. Right now Britain has zero...ZERO, fixed wing naval aircraft.
Because they blew all their money on two massive ships they cannot afford, their Fleet now has no fighter protection and will not for some time.
If they had instead built 2-3 larger Invincible's, they would have probably been finished by now and been equipped (or at least easily afforded to equip them).
There are significant advantages to using short take offs over vertical ones, even for aircraft capable of vertical takeoffs. However, my one complaint is that really, without a catapult and arresting gear, you limit far too much what you can do with a carrier. That would be my big complaint with the design, not that it is too big, but that it really should have EMALS and arresting gear.
You are missing the point...THEY CANNOT AFFORD THEM. Sure, in maybe 15-20 years they might...big deal.
And the F-35C has some range and some payload superiority over the B...but by no means a huge one. Certainly not worth going broke over.
Oh god, it is that...
The America class LHAs are going to carry about a half dozen F-35s. Wasp class similar numbers. The QE, 36.
Yeah, I overestimated the America capacity.
But 2-3 larger Invincible's could easily carry 16-20 F-36's plus support aircraft at a fraction of the cost of the QE's. And they would probably be in service now.
3 new Invincible's - 90,000 tons total MAX.
2 QE's - 150,000 tons.
It would need to be a complete redesign, and I do mean complete. EMALS is new. Flight decks have to be heavily modified due to heat from the F-35s(I understand this is a significant problem we are having). Bulkheads are even different from when I was in the navy. Yes, bulkheads.
It could have been better, but it is not that bad.
Heat? Heat damage is just a matter of changing the deck material for more heat resistance...you put the same deck material on the smaller Invincible's as you are on the QE's.
And the new Invincible's do not need EMALS as they would never use anything but V/STOL's.
The standard F-35 compliment for the QE's will apparently only be 24 (they cannot afford more then that anyway). The old Invincible's carried 12 Harriers and 10 support aircraft. They would not have to be all that much larger to carry 16-20 F-35's...maybe 25-30,000 tons at most. Plus, they could easily afford 3 of them. That is a total of 48-60 F-35's. Two QE's will have 48-72 max and still cost WAY more then 3 new Invincible's.
They would just need to be bigger then the old Invincible's...no major redesign (except to improve).
Once again...Britain cannot afford the QE's with full air compliments and they will not be able to for many years. Because of that, they have left a GAPING hole in their fleet air defence that they must live with for some time.
Sorry, IMO (and my father was British, so I feel some loyalty) the Royal Navy got it COMPLETELY wrong.