The Strategic Defence Review (SDR), subtitled ‘Modern forces for the Modern World’ and produced in 1998, a year after the election of a new Labour government, was a seminal document. It had been a year in gestation and the Government had consulted the widest possible list of authorities: academics, industrialists, Whitehall departments, such as the Foreign Office and the Department of International Development, as well as all elements of the defence establishment. This document had the significant value of presenting a clear rationale for every capability deemed necessary for British forces. One American commentator described the SDR as ‘[making] British armed forces more mobile, and hence more useful, for the post-Soviet world’. In comparing the performance of other allied countries he said, ‘where Britain stands out is in its ability to deploy forces to places where they might actually be needed.'⁽¹⁾ It was seen as an example to all nations, even the United States, in restructuring and tailoring forces to meet the changed strategic environment. The SDR postulated an expeditionary strategy spearheaded by the modernised Joint Rapid Reaction Forces to be achieved by coordinating the activities of the three Services more closely, pooling their capabilities and maximising their impact, while cutting out duplication and waste. In amplifying this strategy it said, ‘In the post-Cold War world, we must be prepared to go to the crisis, rather than have the crisis come to us. So we plan to buy two new larger aircraft carriers to project power more flexibly around the world.'⁽²⁾

The SDR went on to state that at sea the emphasis was moving away from large-scale open ocean operations to ‘littoral operations and force projection, for which maritime forces are well suited’.⁽³⁾ To meet the longer-term needs, the plan specified the requirement to replace the current carriers ‘from around 2012 by two larger, more versatile, carriers capable of carrying a more powerful force, including a future carrier borne aircraft to replace the Harrier’.⁽⁴⁾ One of the supporting essays explained that the ability to deploy offensive air power would be central to future force projection operations, and that ‘present thinking suggests’ that the ships would be in the order of 30,000-40,000 tons and capable of deploying up to 50 aircraft, including helicopters.⁽⁵⁾

The project quickly received Initial Gate approval in December 1998 and a month later Invitations to Tender were issued by the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Responses were received the following May from British Aerospace (subsequently to become BAE Systems after its takeover of Marconi Electronics) and Thompson-CSF (also changing its name, to Thales, after taking over Racal Electronics) and by November 1999 contracts for the Assessment Phase, to be completed by 2003, were awarded to both teams. This was an extremely detailed procedure, requiring the production of six ship design studies to evaluate and compare the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL), short take-off but arrested recovery (STOBAR) and conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) options of operating aircraft from different sizes of carrier. At the Farnborough Air Show of July 2002 the author was able to see presentations of the two companies’ proposals for the project and impressive scale models of the Future Aircraft Carrier (CVF), which by this time had increased in size to something in the order of 60,000 tonnes. This would make the fully laden ship about 65,000 tonnes, in contrast to the 50,000 tonnes of the last large aircraft carrier in the Royal Navy, Ark Royal.