Poiuytrewq wrote:Hopefully the "ship without planes" narrative is now well and truly confined to history.
It has now migrated to...'the aircraft carrier with US planes'. Which ignores the UK aircraft (including all the Merlin) onboard. But, lets be fair it is also true. The fact that the programme plan has clearly shown this for years obviously doesn't stop this...
The annoying thing is that the 'carrier with US planes' will sustain the criticisms for at least the next year or so, including through CSG21. it may well last until 2025 when all the initial 48 F-35 are delivered. It will then move on to lack of escorts and solid stores ships (and again there will be some truth to that).
Basically....there is nothing that they won't criticise. The only thing that would assuage some of those critics is a further 48 F-35B on top of the 48 we're getting, 3 Solid Stores Ships, the T45 re-starting in production with 6 more ordered, the full 14 T26 ordered and T31 still...
And they'd then moan about Merlin Crowsnest..... If we'd bought a Nimitz, full US airwing and CSG they'd have complained about the cost...
Best just to correct and ignore.