Comment Britain won't back out. (Score 2) 364
We can't.
Our two new aircraft carriers can't support anything other than helicopters and VTOL/STOL aircraft. This is thanks to the fuckwits in Whitehall, deciding that we wouldn't add the electric catapults, and thereby save a few million quid.
These catapults would have allowed us to use cheap F-18s, at least in the short term. We scrapped our Sea Harrier fleet a few years ago (they were well past retirement).
So, we've spent billions on two useless flat-tops, while we wait for the F-35 programme to go into a death-spiral.
I predict a +5B quid project in a few years time - adding catapults - the hard way.
Still, it's not like the 12B quid they pissed up the wall, on the useless NHS patient records system. At least we have some working mobile helicopter platforms to show for it.