I'm not so sure about cats and traps, they are a great option for a country like the US, who can afford to have a lot of fleet carriers and multiple air wings cycling in and out of operations and training.

It's a real problem if you only have a few squadrons of fast jets and a couple of carriers.

Keeping aircrew current and carrier qualified is nightmare, the pressure on the handful of qualified aircrew and there families would be enormous, probably enough for very high turnover and subsequently more strain on training.

The B model F35 isn't as capable as the A or C sure, but it's a quantum leap up from Harrier and once it's been fully debugged, it will serve us well.

The flexibility of our big deck STOVOL carriers, with the ease of getting new pilots Carrier qualified and lower costs of operation all round, is a very good fit for the UKicon.

'If' they are properly funded to operate as intended, with four front line Lightening squadrons etc. A buy of the COD variant of the V22 for COD and AAR would be a massive force multiplier and close the gap between CTOL and STOVOL carriers.

If we were ever able to put 36 fully supported jets on board a fully supported carrier (looking remote) they would be a highly visible and capable deterrent.