Many trees have died today carrying us the story that the Royal Navy may share our new carriers with France. What’s worse is that it’s been officially denied by the MoD, which means it’s true (and the French have called a press conference for Friday).

It’s hardly new news though. From The Times of 18 May 2008:

Royal Navy may share new carriers with France

Two hundred years after the battle of Trafalgar, the navy could end up sharing the pride of its fleet with the French. Driven by spiralling budgets, the two navies began talks last week aimed at sharing their aircraft carriers…

So all new arrivals on the Outrage Bus can take their seats at the back with their copies of the Daily Mail and Super Soaraway and catch up.

On the plus side, joint British/French operations last century (Mers-el-Kébir) resulted in a pretty effective level of destruction but on the down side, will every fresh-faced matelot have to dust off their GCSE French (Unclassified)? Probably not. Even the most tone-deaf politician isn’t going to propose dual-flagged ships. 

Any sort of agreement may effectively mean not much more than a long-discussed (and quite sensible anyway) switch to cats and traps on the new carriers and F35C rather than B, which gives a similar platform to the French carrier and the US fleet. The politicians argument about maintaining time at sea is daft, because we currently go for significant periods of time without either Ark Royal or Illustrious at sea at the moment so we’ve already retreated from the doctrine of continuous carrier deployment. Talking about always needing a carrier at sea harks back to a situation not known for a decade, so ignore that political posturing. And more? Well there can’t be. French designers reportedly cheered when their missiles worked in the Falklands, so the French are hardly going to set sail due South if the Argies need another hiding.

One of the most dangerous potential developments is the possible downgrading of one of the carriers to a helicopter assault asset. This has the twin disadvantage of not providing the same capabilities whilst still keeping Labour-bribed Scot voter-welders in subsidised employment. Selling the second carrier to India is just pre-SDR sabre-rattling.

The big and horribly real development is that enhanced collaboration (a word the French are very familiar with) is another slow ratchet movement towards EU Armed Forces. And that’s the scary one.