The whole notion of our carriers is centered around the Saint-Malo agreement which is a common pan European defense policy to which it should comprise 3 carriers 1 french and two British the remaining European nations provided the escort forces that's the main reason they were built.
I don't disagree with you about numbers i do think we do lack a sufficient amount of escorting ships and shouldn't places the hopes on a foreign nation.
i would have dearly loved to have seen 12 type 45's in our fleet along with a full commitment to 16 type 26's but alas it hasn't happened.
I also agree on your view that the Royal navy couldn't sustain the losses it sustained in the Falklands but that was a different time and technology involved, yes we sent 127 ships down south but this was augmented by a large civilian fleet, and a large RFA force however the number of major warships in the area such as CVA DDG FFG SSN's came to the following
2 Light Carriers
2 LPD
6 Submarines (5 SSN's 1 SSK)
23 DDG & FFG (4 were lost 2 Type 42's & 2 type 21) (others suffered various damages)
Problem is Skybird you also seem to count the RFA as Royal navy losses that's just not the case because the RFA is a fully separate civilian organisation and is not part of the Royal Navy at all.
We had 15 Tankers taken up from trade to assist our 10 RFA fleet tankers
we also had 20 freighters sail to assist our 5 landing ship Logistic LSL from the RFA and yes these suffered losses too but were not part of the main battle fleet
We also took up 3 liners from trade the Canberra QE2 and also Uganda (acted as hospital ship) these delivered the bulk of the land forces.
In reality the losses for the war were slim the biggest loss to us was Atlantic conveyor which was a civilian ship taken up from trade, losses were sustainable and with that in mind in a current loss like the above 4 ships of a battle fleet we could afford to loose a few today.
one thing you must also leave out the budget is the Trident program as this is a separate budget issue trident has a stand alone budget and does not feature in our normal main stream defense budget, there is a commitment to replace these submarines with the new Dreadnought class SSBN the number of missiles carried will be 8 not 16 but at present most of our submarine patrol with only half a war load anyway as does the French navy.
Your plan to have the vessels stocked at all times does not make sense in cost terms every time a weapon is employed on a vessel its inspected and certified once it comes off it goes through the same process the handling inspections all cost money the politicians have to get a balance they send ships to sea with only a limited ammunition stock for cost reasons even the USN does this to save money the world is at peace yes we have difficult neighbors sometimes but major war is not imminent.
The German issue seems to stem from lack of investment in personnel and lack of sufficient budget and that's a political problem.
As for the notion the United states didn't help us and shunned us in 1982 that's not correct, we did not ask for American assistance yet the United States aided us with Sidewinder missiles for the Harriers Satellite intelligence and even went to the lengths of offering us a Tarawa class LPA in case one of our carriers got hit we did not ask them to be involved in the conflict at all, the Obama administration let us deal with Libya along with France and took a back seat the operation went well in terms of objectives completed it showed the UK does not need to rely on the United States, however the intertwining of our two navies has been absolute since December 7th 1941 what you don't hear about is the British Navy active role with the USN to augment its fleet during that war in fact a lot of our ships were put at the United States disposal, same with Korea although we did not get involved with Vietnam and they did not get involved in the Falklands.
The UK and USA has many treaties between them and if it wasn't for the UK the Atomic bomb that they created would have taken much longer if it happened at all that was fully down to the UK handing over the Tube Alloys project to the USA, yes after the war they tried to shut us out but that failed as did Skybolt the UK nuclear deterrent is fully independent and does not require any American authority to fire indeed the only thing that is American is the launch system and rocket body the warhead is British but we pay a share in the development costs its a joint venture much like the F35 program and a lot of the technology is shared between the UK and USA more than we think, we also have a common intelligence sharing policy that's far deeper than anything we have with Europe that's the whole reason GCHQ exists.
The UK Iraq invasion was a misadventure but for an economical end, however the UK did benefit from it much to your dismay.
it is a region where we have past experience Iraq is a former Empire colony once named Mesopotamia we controlled it from 1918 chemical attacked Baghdad in 1922 and they gained independence from us in 1962.
one of the first civilian ships to leave the Al Faw refinery terminal after the invasion was BP British Pride destination Southampton we got a lot of oil out of there and still do Iraq is now one of the main ports of call for BP tankers before 2003 BP never serviced Iraq only Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, strange that.
A war with Russia or China as a stand alone 1 v 1 i don't think will happen yes it is a possibility but its a remote one at that and i mean absolutely remote even the Skipiral incident has barely lit a match and the Russians know that bombing the UK would embroil the USA due to the fact the USA has a lot of military establishments here and couldn't guarantee not hitting them.
As for the F35 the UK is fully committed to the procurement of 138 of these aircraft and reiterated that in October 2017 under the defense white paper bill, the fact we have already started delivery on board the QE and also 617 Squadron shows were committed the first 45 should be delivered by Summer 2019, the UK prime minister stated that the defense bill stated 138 F35's is the number they will commit to, that is a sealed commitment it would now cost us to U turn on that whats more the F35 isn't just for the QE but for two squadrons in the UK replacing the now ageing Tornado.
As for why do they sail unarmed well its to show there's no intent its probably a similar reason why sailors man the rails when entering port which is a tradition that harks back to the age of sail to show that no man is below manning weapons, again it is down to international diplomacy and also cost.
Yes im optimistic but i do have a little inside edge with what i do in my line of work, the fact that most of our ships do go to sea only half stocked is a cost measure the theory is if war does break out like it did in 1982 then they can always stop off and arm up which is exactly what they did do in 1982 don't forget the British fleet at that time was on exercise when they got the order to sail south.
Why do we build them? "walk softly and carry a big stick" well the UK is the world leading nation in soft power (the USA is the reverse obviously) the Carriers are the big stick its a statement of intent the we can reach out and touch you, yes that might be a camel in a desert but that might also be Gadzhievo in the Russian far north, currently the Russians do not posses an aircraft carrier (The Kuznetsov is a heavy aviation cruiser just so were clear and has a different mission role) but i do agree more escorts are needed for our two carriers i cant disagree with you on that.
As Mr Quattro said there is also an element of pride in the scheme too moral in the navy is actually quite high right now and recruitment is steady, what is more we have had in the last decade a very big investment in the navy not just the QE but the type 45's new submarines new patrol vessels and new tankers not to mention the solid state vessels.
https://assets.publishing.service.go...ate_17_Oct.pdf This is a colorful example for what our money gets spent on roughly
https://assets.publishing.service.go...ity_Review.pdf This is the SDSR 2015 this outlines a defence plan for the coming 5 years were not due one until 2020 however as you can see its flawed
https://rusi.org/sites/default/files...ision_time.pdf hence this was pushed into the house of commons