I will literally rip my own face off if I hear 1 more moron journalist bleating 'why do we need air craft carriers'

A navy with an arse-kicking fleet carrier always at sea is tremendously more powerful than one without: a two-carrier RN, should it be required to, could easily defeat the Italians out of hand - and the French too, by simply waiting until their one and only carrier is in maintenance. The number of floating tin cans (frigates as they are commonly called) possessed by either side is a complete non-issue.



A future non-carrier RN, wishing to send warships - or protect any sea lanes! - beneath the footprint of even a poxy little foreign air force would be dependent on the USN or France to guarantee their safety. You can't protect sea lanes with destroyers and frigates: even the £1bn+ Type 45 destroyer can only defend a piece of sea perhaps fifty miles across from low-flying or surface attackers*, as it is on the surface and thus its radars cannot see very far.
 
If you think you can protect trade with frigates then you pretty much have to believe that the Earth is flat.


Again in the case of non-nuclear submarines (the only kind we are ever likely to fight) the primary weapon is airborne radar scanning huge swathes of ocean. This forces the boats to submerge and pull down their masts - and thus in the case of conventionally-powered subs it blinds them, cuts off their comms and pins them to the map.


Fit them both with electro magnetic catapults and fill them with lovely cheap F-18s, and fob off the Pentagon (and the US anti-F35 lobby) by staying in the F-35 test programme and saying that we'll buy some F-35Cs at some undetermined future point, when they have become cheap and our current financial woes are in the past.

As Regards Cyber Crime

I am literally ready to shoot myself. This has come from nowhere to be the big mega issue of the moment, I do wonder if this is something to do with Cybercrime expert department (or GCHQ as you may know it) briefly furiously about the dangers of cybercrime and how if HMG is considering, oh I dunno, cuts? That any cuts to GCHQ would be a very bad idea, Cyber crime don't you know! It's hiding under your bed with Bin Laden and will get you!

Iain Lobban, head of the GCHQ, warned that the the UK government is targeted with over 1,000 cyber attacks a month.


Sean Sullivan, security advisor for F-Secure, commented: "Iain Lobban’s comments seem strategically timed to protect GCHQ’s funding ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement on 20 October."

"One could even argue they are over-hyped because the sort of attacks or worms he refers to are very common and have been for some time. They are experienced by all sorts of different organisations failing to implement best security practices - not just Government agencies," Sullivan added.

F-Secure reckon the number of targeted email attacks has risen across all sectors of the UK economy. "The US's cyber command also recently spoke of worms 'targeting' them but, once again, most of these worms target everybody," Sullivan added.

(most of this is pinched from the Register)