By Sam Fairall-Lee
The recent revisiting of the arguments around taking the F-35 to sea cast my mind back to the bitter carrier debate of the 1970s and early 1980s. The current discussion certainly doesn’t appear to bring with it the same level of interservice acrimony, political manoeuvring or sheer dirty-trickery that took place back then. Nevertheless, the isolated and zero-sum nature of some of the arguments and counterarguments seems familiar, and it occurs to me that—despite the great strides we’ve made in jointery—the one-dimensional character of our strategic capability planning really hasn’t changed all that much.
