Cold War nuclear assumptions and carrier debate

The Royal Navy still needed to support the GIUK gap, reinforce Norway, and protect Atlantic convoys against Soviet submarines. Carriers also belonged to an allied strike concept that required time to concentrate and move into the high north. Yet the assumption that a NATO-Warsaw Pact war would become nuclear almost immediately implied that reinforcement convoys would never arrive and carrier groups would never reach their operating areas. That logic made carriers, strike aircraft, and even sustained conventional operations appear unnecessary by presuming away the phase of war they were meant to manage. This distorting assumption shows how beliefs about the timetable of escalation can decide whether a capability appears relevant before its actual operational value is considered.