But some further thoughts on how the "loadout" on the two carriers, with a lot! of capacity, could be better:
When our carriers were mainly of WW2 design (if not of construction, because so many of them sprung back to life much later)... that led to some ingenious carrier a/c designs that would work within those (size) limits.
Not that we should pull out of F-35
but what else (cheaper, smaller) to load out to make the whole thing - carrier strike that is, no doubt they can be amphib substitutes... while we are waiting
money's worth. So "now" rather than in ten years' time. Provocatively
- we should never have dropped Gannet, but rather proceeded with the version using counter-rotating propellers
- that one (one crew member added too, not just improving on how long it could stay up).
I used the std Gannet as a yardstick for how much space will be required, respectively, in the max folded config (in the hangar, lifts):
Gannet 1
Buccaneer! 1.16
Skyhawk 1.35
SeaHarrier 1.36
(U)K Phantom II 1.8
F-111B 2.6
F-14 Tomcat 2.7
So the cousins only bothered in the age of dumb bombs (Skyhawk) and after that rather built bigger ships than shrink the performance. Just like with Skyhawks (numbers!) keeping the AEW up there 24/7 numbers might come in handy, rather than maximising the performance - and surely that has not been done with the choice of a helo-based solution as the ceiling is so drastically curtailed - numbers, numbers... which translates to size (in the hangar).
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)