As the UK ponderously dispatches a carrier to the Gulf while imploring neighbours to provide the sort of escort it would need in order not to be sunk, the nimbler-footed are going for altogether smaller and more flexible means like this: among the first purpose-built drone-carriers, or at least in Europe.
Launching and landing fully-sized fighters (costing nowadays $100 million each) has always been problematic, and while it is for drones too there is less egg-on-face ~ a significant concern in the West ~ if you lose one in the circumstances.
The UK lost one such mega-death jet when it dropped off the end of the carrier on take-off... because a foam plug had been left in an air-intake. It is always going to happen, yes, but need not always cost so much.*
Ed. Roughly, as Google's AI says. Governments rarely publish acquisition figures as (a) they're funded by taxes (b) are usually embarrassing and (c) nobody cares.
