The aircraft carriers: flog one, share one?

The Strategic Defence Review is offering us a positively gladiatorial sport – watching the MoD as shape-changer, desperately trying to square the circle in its attempts to get whatever it is that it wants. It’s looking increasingly destabilised.

Last week or so we heard that the decision might be to build only one aircraft carrier and immediately sell it to Japan – the market is evidently there.

Tonight (30th August 2010) the latest twist is that an aircraft carrier might be shared with France to defray costs.

Either way there’ll be tears before bedtime.

Historically, the Japanese made pretty effective use of their aircraft carriers. How would that play if we flogged them our latest and renounced a similar provision ourselves?

And, given the fault lines in our historical and continuing relationships with the French, how exactly will sharing an aircraft carrier work? Who gets it on weekends? Who can have it in their deployment on NATO’s bi-annual Exercise Joint Warrior? And if sharing means joint crews, who will command?

And if the Clyde yards get to contribute to their building, do we care?