Britain and France may share aircraft carriers

According to this article in The Independant, the UK and France may share naval carriers.

This would reduce the amount of new aircraft carriers each nation would need to build or maintain. The UK's aircraft carriers are due to be replaced but the cost has proven to be unpalatable in the light of the austerity measures which the coalition government will need to impose in order bring the nation's deficit down.

It should be noted that aircraft carriers are pretty much essential for any nation that wishes to maintain a modern navy and to conduct armed operations outside of their own coastal waters. Nowadays nations aspiring to naval power do not build battleships, they build aircraft carriers.

This thread should probably be read in conjunction with this thread concerning China building more warships than the USA.

Reading that headline several potential problems occurred to me, only a few of which have been touched upon by that article.

The UK has previously thrown its military power behind America, something France has been vocal in its disapproval of. Would sharing a military interest with France mean that the UK would have a greater obligation to side with them, particularly when both countries hold a permanent seat on the UN security council?

Of course, this could work vice-versa.

I have to say, I'm slightly surprised that Sarkozy is agreeable with this. It doesn't seem (to me) very much his style.

Does that mean half the ship will surrender when attacked?

More importantly, who will be in charge of the galley?

Actually food with the Royal Navy was pretty good last time I was away with them. On the other hand last time I ate with the French it was pretty awful.

On a more serious note there are other problems with the plan. The circumstances may be that at a crucial time there may only be the french carrier at sea because ours are in for refit or deep service. What would then happen if something like the Falklands happened again. Would the French permit their carrier to be sailed in defence of our interests abroad?

The article did say that they were trying to work this out. I'm not quite sure how they'll manage it though.

If you really want to get into the subject of why there are problems revolving around the relationships of the UK, USA and France you have to go back to the Suez Crisis when the USA told us we should pullout. The French came to the conclusion that the USA probably would not go to war in defence of French interests and decided they could not trust the USA and should rely on themselves (hence withdrawal from the NATO military command and the truely independent nuclear weapons). The UK came to a different conclusion and decided it should tow the line of whatever US foreign policy thought was best.

I kinda meant I wasn't sure how they'd work out the logistics of sharing, I'm pretty familiar with Suez.

It also did not help the French that they basically wanted to hold onto their colonial empire after WW2 and we were against the continuation of colonialism. But hey the only downside to that policy was that we ended up in Vietnam after the French lost while trying to hold onto indochina.

It look like the UK & France are pressing ahead with the new Entente Cordiale (despite disagreements concerning how to resolve the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis).

Cameron and Sarkozy hail UK-French relationship

UK and France sign nuclear energy agreement