The 1966 cancellation of CVA-01 followed a strategic choice that prioritized NATO's Central Front and the British Army of the Rhine. The policy assumed both that future operations would remain inside NATO's area and that allied carriers or land-based aircraft would supply naval air power. The Falklands campaign violated both conditions at once: it was out of area and conducted without an American or French carrier contribution. Hermes and Invincible provided the available fixed-wing aviation capacity, even though neither matched the larger carrier force abandoned in the 1960s. Experience with Ark Royal and Eagle had already suggested that at least three CVA-01 carriers would be needed to sustain the capability. The Army of the Rhine still had value within NATO, but optimizing solely for alliance bargaining power left British interests outside that scenario exposed. The Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan were later out-of-area operations, reinforcing the danger of treating a planning assumption as a universal rule.
Chapter · 49:09-56:23
The Falklands War broke Britain's alliance-planning assumption
The 1982 campaign exposed the risk in assuming that British operations would remain inside NATO's area and always receive allied carrier support.