Comments by "Tams80" (@tams805) on "What It's Like On Board Britain's NEXT Aircraft Carrier | Forces TV" video.

Such a small number of necessary crew is very impressive. Especially considering the number of people required on US carriers. It's like a large village compared to a town.
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And the US's Ford hasn't had planes on it yet either.
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Three would be nice, but quite frankly the MOD can't afford it. It's not just the cost of another carriers itself. In fact the cost for such a ship isn't that high. It's the need for and therefore the cost of all the escorts. Currently we could just about scrap together enough for both carriers to be on active deployment (very unlikely). If we had the original number of Type 45s and Type 26s, then we could do it; but we don't and won't. Now, with a third carrier, we probably would have ended up with only one on active deployment, so the escort problem wouldn't be too bad. We may also regret not having a third when one eventually has to go in for a long refit. Ships cost a lot of money just existing though, even with a skeleton crew and no need for escorts.
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Sea kings too. Probably just a couple of stats he's memorised in order to give perspective. Note how he mentioned them after the F35 and Merlin.
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Planes used for cats and traps have to be extensively modified and have far shorter life-spans. Sure, it's not to the same extent as V/STOL, but it's still significant. Enough navies are looking at operating small carriers or converting LPDs for a V/STOL carrier to make sense. That and the RAF now having aircraft the can pretty much as is land on carriers (they would not accept traps and cats aircaft) is an efficient use of limited resources.
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