Treaty space for a scout-carrier fleet

The scenario keeps the Washington treaty framework but adds a twelve-thousand-ton carrier category for a fleet focused on scouting. Ships below ten thousand tons were nominally unrestricted, yet that limit was too small for a satisfactory peacetime naval carrier. Hermes becomes the practical model: a purpose-built ship able to operate roughly twenty to twenty-four aircraft without pretending that a small scout carrier can replace a fleet carrier. Article VIII treated existing carriers as experimental and allowed replacement without waiting for normal age limits, so the Royal Navy could keep useful hulls until the timing suited it. The revised categories would give Britain globally distributed reconnaissance ships and a separate force for concentrated fleet operations.